A WEEK AT PORT-ROYAL 






Nothing is so precious as leisure ; not because one 
should do nothing, but because one may choose to do 
what one will — Socrates 



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AT THE CORNWALL CHRONICLE OFFICE. 

MONTEGO-BAY, 

1855. 






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PREFACE 



Natural quam te colimus inviti quoque.— Seneca 



Every natural object is an " altar of memorial" 
to Divine Wisdom, but how few bring the offerings 

to be laid upon it. The following 

memoranda claim no higher character than the 
jottings in Natural History, with which I amuse 
myself, when I can get away from my public duties 
for a time to enjoy rest and recreation. They were 
used as contributions to the pages of the Cornwall 
Chronicle, with a view of assisting the Editorial 
labours of the Proprietor of that Paper, at a time 
when he was suffering persecution as a journalist 
They have been since printed in collected form in 
the expectation of rendering them in that shape 
more extensively beneficial to him, while they claim 
not to be devoid of interest to the Colonial public 
from the local information they contain. 

RICHARD HILL. 



A WEEK AT PORT ROYAL. 



Saturday 21st April, 1855. — ^1 have just visited 
Port Royal for a few days for sea air. My ailment, 
a degree of pneumonia, increases and diminishes so 
with changes of weather, that I am persuaded a de- 
cided sea-atmosphere will be an effectual alterative, 
and set up a new action in the system, and prove 
better to me than medicine. 

Port Royal is a place for the memory. Her mis- 
fortunes have made her memorable. In the history 
of places reckoned among the great and famous of 
the Earth, she stands remembered as a terrible ex- 
ample. Like Tyre, she has had her princes of the 
sea taking up a lamentation for her. " How art 
thou destroyed that wast inhabited of sea-faring men 
—the renowned city, —which wast strong in the Sea, 
— whose inhabitants caused terror on all that 
haunted it : — how were the isles troubled at thy de- 
parture." — Ezek. ch. xxvi. Nothing can less l>e like 
Port Royal of the Earthquake than the miserable 
shadow of a shade, that bears the name, now.— 
" The city that trafficked in violence,"- — lies ten fa- 
♦hom-deep, and the poor representative of it that has 

A 



been built on the succeeding accumulation from the 
ocean, has no sort of commercial importance. 

The old city must have been wealthy,— for King- 
ston has risen on its ruins. In the wars of the French 
Revolution, when the neighbouring Colony of Saint 
Domingo was a great and rich dependence of the 
enemy, — its naval importance made it a place of bu- 
siness : — but never anything more than mere victual- 
ing business ; the supply of vegetables to the ship- 
ping ; of pigs and poultry to the outward bound 
Vessels, and of turtle to the merchant princes of Lon- 
don. All this is now nearly gone. Peace has re- 
duced the naval activity to the fitful visits of the 
Admiral to the station, and steam navigation has con- 
centrated the bustle of comers and goers all in King- 
ston. The mercantile shipping no longer halt at 
Port Royal ; and the vegetable market, that made it 
worth while to distinguish the plantation at Passage 
Fort, that supplied it teeming with melons and cu- 
cumbers, as thick as the fields of Egypt, with the 
name of Pumpkin-ground, is still stocked with escu- 
lent roots and fruits, but for very little beyond the 
week's supplies to the impoverished d?;ellers in the 
remnant of the town now known as Port Royal. 

There are two persons, humble, but not^ forgotten, 
though both dead, of whom I have been anxious to 
obtain some intelligence. The motherly lodging- 
house-keeper, the Couba of Nelson's correspondence, 
and Sarah Adams, the matron of the naval Hospital. 
Nelson, in writing to his, friend Captain Lockyer, 
whom he calls his best of friends, and from whom so 
many of his early letters have been recovered*in va- 
riably sends remembrance from Couba of Port Royal, 



g 



referring to her as a person to whom gratitude was 
doe for kindness and attention. After the disastrous 
expedition up the river San Juan de Nicaragua, 
when so many perished from the suffering of over- 
tabour, and Nelson was saved from dysentery to a- 
chieve his great name, he was conveyed on shore in 
his cot, to Couba's, and thence to the Admiral's 
country residence in the mountains of St. Andrew's 
for change of air, and to be nursed under the eyes of 
Lady Parker. Tired as much of his do*nothing 
solitude, as of his slow recovery, he writes to Her- 
yules Ross of Kingston, the Coryphosus of Navy 
Agents in those days, 1780, — to say, that where he 
was, a sick Lieutenant was as little thought of as a 
log of wood, and sensitive under the discomfort of 
his situation, he exclaims— -" Oh, Mr Ross, what 
would I give to beat Couba's lodgings, in Port Roy- 
al/' I find that Couba has not perished from the 
pubic memory. She was a kind-hearted negress, 
named Couba Cornwallis — had been the mistress of 
Admiral Cornwallis, when a young officer on this 
station, and in the fashion of those days, when the 
fortune that gave a woman a friend in these Colonies 
gave her also a family name, — the African Couba, 
became Couba Cornwallis. When prince William, 
was a midshipman under Lord Hood, a wild frolick- 
some sailor-boy, — as they remember him, Couba's 
care soothed many a headache ; — her timely watch- 
fulness checked many a fever of the Royal blood. — 
William, Duke of Clarence and King of England, 
seems to have narrated to his kind princely-hearted 
partner; now of sainted memory, as the good Queen 
Adelaide,— anecdotes of her kindness, for she sen J 



to Couba Cornwallis, — a present of a costly gown," 
w- which the benevolent Couba, would not wear, but 
icserved for her burial. It was her shroud in the 
grave. Couba lived till the year 1848. Sarah 
Adams, was another kind-hearted negress, remem- 
bered with affection by the sailors. Her last offices 
were those of the matron of the Naval Hospital. I 
heard Sir Charles Adams, who was on this station, 
in 44 and 45, — say that nothing afforded him greater 
pleasure, when after some interval of forty years, 
coming here as Admiral, he found Sarah Adams, 
whom he had noticecWwith admiration when a mid- 
shipman fourteen years of age, as a remarkably 
handsome negress, endeared by a kind and gentle 
disposition to the officer-boys like himself, —in the 
distinguished situation of matron of the Hospital. 
It was pleasant, he said, to see such a recognition of 
sterling worth ; and such faithful discernment of me- 
rit, in those whose duty it was to select fit persons 
for confidential offices. Sarah Adams, in old age, 
was a singularly handsome woman, fn what way 
the waters of life had proved troubled waters to her, 
I know not ; but she never took her marriage name, 
which was said to hnve been Mullins ; but stuck to 
the Sarah Adams that endeared her to the heart of 
those among whom she lived and died. Her death 
occurred in 1849. 

Twelve years and some four months ago I spent 
a day in Port Royal. I was labouring under sick- 
ness after a heavy family affliction ***** 
* * * * [ was indifferent about most things that 
would have interested me, The scenes of the gar- 
rison-vard, were however irresistibly attractive.-— 



The cocoa-nut trees and cordias, — Asclepiases and 
hibiscuses, formed the lines and avenues that tbey 
do now, and the walks were already bordered with 
large cannon-balls, and soccotrine aloes, but a 
guazuti deer, or a llama, as some say, very likely 
both, — peccaries, and agoutis, sauntered through 
them, and monkies swung at the ends of the -flounc- 
ing palm-branches, or leaped from tree to tree ; and 
maccaws, big and brilliant in red and blue and blue 
and yellow flung their wings about among the green 
leaves ; and cockatoos and parrots and parroquets, 
whistled and chattered away*in the midst of foliage 
and flowers. The place was a perfect zoological 
garden. I found in cages against the wall, the 
margya, and, if I am not mistaken, a superlatively 
fine specimen of the felis tigrina pardalis, the parded 
ocelot. There were some Curacoa birds about. — 
There may perhaps have been a pelican on the 
beach, for this is a common citizen of Port Royal. 
There were the usual intermixture of running Mus- 
covy ducks and poultry ; and a carrion-vulture ba- 
lancing its wings hither and thither, and a man-of- 
war-bird hovering, and a gull scudding: and a booby 
soaring, gave the whole scene an interest to be seen 
concentrated no where out of some pantomime of 
Harlequin Crusoe or Peter Wilkins. 

I am informed that Colonel Rudyard and Dr. 
Williams of the artillery were the collectors of the 
living wonders that were at that time gathered to- 
gether here, contrasting the quiet rationality of the 
brute world within the parade gardens, with the 



6 



unquiet irrationality of the human coteries outside 
the garrison. One would have thought that a taste 
of this sort once established, and so easily gratified 
by the aid of the cruisers on the station, would hard- 
ly ever have been abandoned. Fruit-eating birds, 
and fruit-eating beasts may be kept readily ; but 
graminivorous animals, must starve at Port Royal ; 
it grows no grass save in the little park where the 
salute and announcement guns are fired morning 
and evening. Every where else is grassless, what- 
ever else it may grow.* The tribulus gives its rich 
yellow blossoms to the running poultry, and the 
eareering pigeons find pickings among the pea-pods 
of the crotalaria in the sands ; but the sea birds, 
and the morass^hens would thrive, and herons and 
flamingoes might be kept as common here as they 
were about the Fort of Manzanilla in Cuba when I 
visited it some years ago. There were scarcely a 
cottage on the beach there that had not white egrets 
standing four feet high, — scarlet ibises, and red 
flamingoes, coming and going into the cottage yards, 
and there were those cursorial birds that keep 
the houses free from insects running in and out the 
rooms ; and there too, I saw the caprorays the utia 
of the Indians, penned up and fed in an enclosure 
shadowed by the palm and paletuvier with the mock- 
ing-bird singing in cages. 

I have never seen a mocking-bird here at Port 
Royal, though a sweet song I heard Miss Stevens 
sins in some West Indian Melodrama at Covent 
Garden said— 



" Fretty little mocking-bird, thy form I see, 
Swinging to the breeze on the mangrove tree." 
The mangroves have their own singing bird, and a 
splendid little bird it is, the sylvicola petechi, the 
Canary warbler ; its five notes are as brilliant as its 
plumage. It trills a shrill repetition of them, with 
no variation ; and jerks about familiarly among the 
blossoms of the gamboge mallows in the town. Be- 
side the Canary warbler I have only seen of small 
birds a couple of flame«coloured ruticillas (setophaga 
ruticilla,) a very rich- tinted bird, whose plumage of 
intermingled black and orange, as I would say, if 
oranges were always as ruddy as they are in this and 
the succeeding month, when they are luscious ripe, 
whose rich fiery plumage, never fails to arrest at- 
tention. They are on their back migration from 
Equinoctial America to Canada. They always loiter 
in our sea-side thickets for some two or three weeks* 
These are all the small birds I have seen, save and 
except one loggerhead tyrant, tyrannus caudifascia- 
tus. I would add, I have not observed a cat in 
Port Royal. 

I have seen in Kingston several of our own, and 
several birds of the neighbouring continent so recon- 
ciled to a dependence on the bounty of man, that it 
might be mistaken for domestication if it was not, 
that breeding in captivity made no part of the expe- 
riment. No birds more readily submit to human 
dependence than the parrot tribe, — but no instance 
of a parrot breeding in this tame life, has been known 
yet. I have seen the noddy-tern megalopterus sto- 



8 



lidug, as familiar among the poultry of a house yard 
as the pigeons. The washings of the plates gave him 
generally a sufficiency of fish and flesh-food, but if 
he got only soaked bread, and broken yam and rice, 
he was quite reconciled to his feeding. I have my- 
self kept the booby, sula fusca, for months, and as 
we have six different species, very unsatisfactorily 
made out by naturalists, — though the distinctions 
noticed by Brisson, are precisely correct, it would be 
worth some pains to get them together in a sea side 
menagerie, I have seen the palamadea, — thechau- 
na-chavaria, — that the Indians of Carthagena rear 
among their geese and fowls, as a guard to the poul- 
try-yard against vultures, living on grain and aqua- 
tic herbs, and housing among our hens and chickens. 
It is as large as a Turkey. I have seen the nycti- 
corax, a submissive retainer. We have two species, 
— one the Americanue, distinguishable only from the 
Gardeni of Europe in size, and both breed in the 
mangrove lagoons about Port Royal. I have seen a 
flock of dendrocygna arborea and autumnalis kept ; 
and the sultana, the gallinula martinicensis, — tame 
as the porphyrio of Sicily, to which it is allied both 
in splendour of colouring and character. In Marti- 
nique they take the young of the purple gallinule 
from the marshy savannas, and find that they tame 
easily, fed on rice, peas, and bread ; and Buffon re- 
lates that the Sicilian porpbyrios, which the Marquis 
de Nesle kept in his volery, showed such a ready dis- 
position to domestication in the strictest sense of the 
word that, in the Spring of 1778, a pair constructed 



9 



k nest which they placed on a projecting wall, but 
the six eggs of the size of a demi-billiard, being plac- 
ed under a common hen, because the mother did not 
seem assiduous in covering her charge, — failed under 
that foster parent. The Brazilian jabiru is a mon- 
ster worth seeing. He has the size of a pony, and 
the appetite of six pelicans : but he is an awful bur- 
Chen of a pet. I have seen him introduced here, 
standing at a kitchen door like a sentry,— but watch- 
ful there, only to bolt every thing the cook should 
leave within his reach. Useful birds might however 
be brought with facility into the island, now that in- 
tercourse by the railroad of the Isthmus makes a short 
shake -hand of the Pacific and the Atlantic. We 
might get the eereopsis or new Holland goose from 
Australia, and the bernicla sandviciensis or little 
diminutive goose of Hawaii. Both have been sue* 
cessfully bred in England. 



In the old maps of what now forms the harbour 
of Kingston, Port Royal, anciently known as Port 
Cagua,* was one of a system of islands which the 
Spaniards united by a line of intervening stockades. 
Against these the currents and the winds heaped 
sand, and formed the continuous spit of land known 
as the palisades. One may stand facing the breeze, 
that is, the constant ocean wind, that blows here 
almost daily with refreshing force, and see how the 
sand shifted before it, swells into hillocks, or gradu- 
ates into dunes. The elevation of the windward side 



* The Indian name, written in the old journals Cagway. 



10 



of the palisades exceeds that of the leeward. The 
shore rises steep from the water on the one side, with 
the billows breaking in heavy surges, the foaming 
waters washing up the materials with a rapid rush. 
On the inward side, the ground shelves off info 
shoals, and lagoons arched over with the mangrove. 
The desert sands that intervene, are seen ridged into 
ripples by their shifts before the gusty sweep of the 
breezes. They do not cohere as ripple-marks made 
by water do, but change continually, heaping them- 
selves up against every obstruction. 

The Cashaw-tree that grows so vigorously in-land 
is unable to make head against the bluster of the 
sea'breeze. It springs up with no trunk in the face 
of the wiud, but starts off low and bushy, and fre« 
qtiently shows that it has been damned up, and over« 
whelmed by currents of drifted sand. 

There are some masses of cohering pebbles forming 
laminated fragments of conglomerate, lifted by the 
surges into the inclined position in which they lie 
on the beach. The surges wash over them, and the 
broken waters in their refluent course as the billows 
retire, cut them into pieces and patches, and channel 
them into deep and shallow lines. 

Among the shingteg on the shore, I find tine spe« 
cimens of the close-grained stone, a supposed lias 
from which lithographic stones have been taken. 
The pebbles of the beach are porphyry and trap, and 
a few granites. Masses of gypsum occur, and some 
dark^tinted limestones. 

The vegetation of the beach consists of asclepias 
gigantea : prosopis juliflora : capparis cynophallo- 



11 



phora : canavalia rosea : crotalaria verrucosa and re- 
iusa : aloe perfoiiata : convolvulus pes*capra3. 

Besides these, there are the planted cocoanut, eo- 
cos nucifera : hibiscus populneus : and Parkinsonia 
aculeata : teccomas and yuccas. The rhizophora 
mangle lines the lagoons inward, and some traces 
of the coccoloba uvifera, or the sea-side grape are 
seen about. In the gardens there are a few trees and 
shrubs remarkable for their flowers, that manage to 
struggle through the obstacles of sand and water : 
the cordia, the nerium, the plumieria, the poinciana, 
two or three acacias, the mikania, some of the sola- 
nacea, and the vinca. I wonder they do not add to 
them, the showy blossoms we find upon sea shores 
elsewhere. The amarjllis belladonna, and the pan- 
cratium maritimum will grow in sand, and the 
xylcphillas will vegetate within the spray of the 
ocean, I find that the cassia obovata or Alexan- 
drine senna occurs on the sands further to the east- 
ward. 

If the convolvulus pes-caprse was not one of the 
commonest of flowers, it would be reckoned one of 
the most beautiful of the convolvulaceae. It is dis- 
tinctively the sea-side blosom. Its natural place is 
the sandy shore, which it mats and covers with a 
network of stoloniferous stems, mantling with a rich 
and glossy garniture of green leaves, crimson blos- 
soms — thick and luscious. The most unpromising 
of beaches is never without clots and patches of if. 
Even when our winter thickets are so brilliant with 
large delicate blue and purple ; white and crimson-* 



12 

starred ; roseate and lilac convolvuluses, the deep 
rich glow of the pes-capras on the sands loses no • 
thing of its interest by rivalry. Our hedge-rows are 
usually profuse in garlands of either the distinctive 
concolvulus or the ipomsea. It is the merit of the 
sea-beach -flower to have the beauty and richness of 
both. The most arid of the Port Royal sands are 
profuse with them. 

The canavalia rosea burthens with its matting of 
trifoliate leaves the stunted acacias, and makes a 
convenient bower against sun and wind. Macfady- 
en names it the purple flowered sea-side bean, and 
sets down its habitat, as common on the sands of 
the shore -,— purple-flowered is a better specific name 
than rosea. It is deeper-tinted than carmine, and 
looks rich when full of blossoms ; blue-red and 
b.anchy. 

The crotalarias verrucosa and retusa, the rattle- 
wort, must be uncommonly endurable plants, to 
thrive on these hot dry sands but there they grow 
throwing cut their racemes of handsome blue and 
yellow flowers amid the desert rubble, like lupins 
in a summer garden. They greatly resemble the 
lupin. In the rush of the sea-breeze they may be 
heard rattling their herd inflated pods, wakening up 
the pretty pink moths that slumber through the day 
among their palmated leaves. I confess that a flower 
that will grow in such a place as this burning shore, 
would have to me a high recommendation, even if it 
had no beauty, but the crotalaria, is a very ornamen- 
tal flower, only too common to attract notice. In a 



1-3 



situation like this in which not a blade of anything 
grows, it is noticeable. It is the kindred crotalaria 
striata, common in mountain roads, that, retaining 
the rain-drops long after showers, annoys the foot 
traveller so much as to have received the name of 
the water-bush. Is there anything peculiar in the 
leaves by which they resist the evaporating powers 
of sun-ligbt, and thus become remarkable, the one 
for nursing its moisture to carry on vegetation in the 
burning desert, and the other, to pour out rain- 
drops where the climate is moist, and the vegetation 
riant and luscious ? 



A plan of Port Royal, published some sixty years 
ago, represents the present condition of the spit of 
land on which the town stands, relatively with what 
remained after the great earthquake of 1692. It 
shews what was then sunk, together with the since 
gathered accumulations on the south side, and what 
in some degree replaces the land lost upon the North. 
A white buoy floats in seven fathoms water at a 
considerable distance out, in what is the road-stead. 
This buoy marks the situation, of a sunken fort at the 
most northerly point inward, within what is speci- 
ally Port-royal Harbour. Along this, trending east- 
ward, the sounding line strikes on the ancient wharfs 
and fortifications. The present star-shaped fortress, 
known as Fort Charles, which commanded a deep 
embayed hole called Chocolate Hole, in the midst of 
the shock that engulphed houses and embattled walls 
and wharfs far away to the North of it, remained a 
detached Island. A central patch of land to the north 



14 



east, in addition to Fort Charles, is all that remains 
of ancient Port Royal. It is very evident from the 
fact that the palisades are a chain of islands fortui- 
tously united by accumulations from the daily surf, 
that the outward and inward ledges of rock which 
give the precipitous depth of water entering and 
rounding into port, if shaken out of place or rent, 
to say nothing of being thrown down and sunk — 
would be sufficient for the destruction that ensued. 
The centre rocks were shaken but not dislodged ; the 
outer ones were moved out of place. All the inter- 
stitial land, slid away into the deep, and the inroli- 
ing sea, with the swell and surge that accompanies 
any shock of an earthquake, engulphed houses and 
inhabitants in the four to seven-fathom depth in 
which they lie buried. Fort Charles, that edged the 
sea north and south, now stands midway between 
wide borders of new land* Chocolate Hole, with 
some more of the old deep sea, is now the garrison 
parade. The outer edges of the spit, that is the pa- 
lisades as they are at present, slip immediately into 
deep water. A large vessel, under sail to her an- 
chorage, could throw a shilling ashore, and the best 
fishing-ground for sharks and bonitos, is the white 
buoy on the Fort-shoal, out away in the harbour to 
the north-west of the Hospital- 
One can assign no determinate eiFect to the sub- 
teranean commotions of an earthquake. Sometimes 
the movement is by horizontal oscillations ; some? 
times upward and downward by perpendicular up* 
liftings, as if an explosive force had suspended the 
action of gravitation, and this force terminates sen* 



15 



sibly by a settling down, first on one side, and then 
on another, that is by a swaying from the right hand 
to the left, and from the left to the right. It isnow 
within a few days, thirteen years ago, since the city 
of Cape ria'itien was overturned, and from three to 
four thousand of its inhabitants buried under the 
fall of their houses. The whole of the north of St, 
Domingo was convulsed. Large fissures sent out 
sulphureous vapours, and bituminous waters. The 
Citadel of the Ferrier, cresting a mountain above 
the clouds, was half of it precipitated down the cliffs 
a couple of thousand feet into the vale below. In 
1852 the city of St. Jago de Cuba was one third of 
it destroyed, and the earth continued to be rent and 
torn for weeks after ; and we saw during these shocks, 
the river Cobre at Spanish Town, calm flowing of a 
sudden in its upward channel, while it increased its 
velocity in its downward channel to the sea. 

The violence which the island suffered during the 
earthquake that destroyed Port Royal, is related 
with too much distinct circumstantiality to be reject- 
ed as an overcharged picture. The ground, we are 
told, swelled and heaved like a rolling sea ; the earth 
was traversed by numerous cracks two or three 
hundred of which were seen opening and then closing 
rapidly again. People were swallowed up in the 
rents : some the earth caught by the middle and 
squeezed to death ; and others after being engulphed 
were cast up again with quantities of water. The 
large store-houses on the harbour side subsided so as 
to be submerged from twenty-four to forty-eight feet; 
the mast heads of the vessels stood among the walls 



16 



of the houses. The land round about sunk to the 
amount of a thousand acres, in less than a minute. 
At the first shock, the sea rolled in, and converted 
the land into a swamp ; and in the part of the town 
that remained standing one of the streets was found 
to have been doubled in width. 

Admiral Sir Charles Hamilton related, that, in 
1780, the submerged houses were plainly discerni- 
ble between the town as it now stands and the usual 
anchorage of vessels of war. Bryan Edwards says, 
in 1793, the ruins were visible in clear weather from 
the boats which sailed over them ; and Lieutenant 
B. Jeffrey of the Royal Navy, states, that when 
engaged in the surveys made between the years 1824 
and 35, he repeatedly traced sites of buildings where 
the depth of the water is from four to six fathoms. 
When there was little wind, he perceived traces of 
houses, especially distinct when he used the instru- 
ment called "the diver's eye," let down below the 
ripple of the wave. The lake, which is said to have 
covered above a thousand acres, burying under sand 
and gravel every thing of vegetable life that existed 
on the surface, is evidently spoken of some still 
existing ponds in St. Thomas in the Vale ; for, we 
are told that, between Spanish Town and sixteen 
mile walk, that is within the gorge of the Rio Cobre, 
at what is called the Bog- walks, (Bocaguas,)the high 
and perpendicular cliffs bounding the river fell in, 
stopped the waters and flooded the vale for nine 
days, the floods subsiding when the river had wash- 
ed away the obstruction. The Blue Mountain and 
other high ranges of mountains are declared to have 



17 



been strangely torn and rent, The rivers from these 
mountains ceased to flow for twenty-four hours, and 
when the damned-up floods found a course to the 
sea they brought down thousand tons of timber, that 
floated about in the ocean, grouped like so many 
islands. So rapid and resistless had the trees rush- 
ed down in their course that they were in general 
barkless and branchless. It is particularly remark- 
ed in these narratives, as in that of so many earth - 
quakes that dead fish were taken up in great num- 
bers on the coast after the shocks. The correspon- 
dents of Sir Hans Sloane, who collected with care 
the accounts of eye-witnesses of the catastrophe, re- 
fer constantly to subsidences, as if there was a pre- 
vailing supposition that the whole island had sunk 
considerably. 

Looking at Sir Charles Lyell's delineations of the 
fissures and chasms left after the earthquake of 
Calabria in 1783, we may explain many peculiari- 
ties, not so much of our mountain gullies and ravines 
as of the gullies that occur in our plains. They 
seem to commence in no confluent water-shed. — 
They cut their channels through the argillaceous 
strata, with vertical cliffs, and cannot be accounted 
for in the course they take by the declivity of the 
plain, or by the quantity of rain they drain from 
the surface. The early maps of Saint Catherine's 
show that there have occurred deviations in the 
course of the Rio Cobre, that are not easily to be 
reconciled by abundant rains. Antecedent to the 
discovery of the West Indies, the embouchure of the 



18 



river was perceptibly in the ponds, shut in by the 
narrow belt of land Off which Fort Augusta stands, 
the river having been at that time more of a surface 
stream and striking to the sea due South; the outlet 
curving Northward and embaying passage Fort. At 
the time of the conquest; of the island by the Eng- 
lish, the river flowed in an opposite direction due 
north, coursing the foot of the Caymanas mountainSj 
and making the present lagoons in the upper part 
of that plain its channel, seeking the sea southward, 
through what is now an independent stream, called 
the Ferry-river (Fresh river.) In 1722, in the midst 
of an extraordinary rain storm, this channel was 
suddenly quitted, and' a straight line made Eastward 
The settling waters as they reached the harbour of 
Kingston, impeded by the Easterly winds, regurgi- 
tated through tne lakelet into which they gathered 
themselves, and digging out the soil at the foot of 
the mountains made the present lagoons, increasing 
the sea-bord lands of Hunt's Bay 3000 feet (three 
thousand.) The silt and sand that form the subsoil 
of Saint Catherine's plain abound with land shells 
of existing helices, at an elevation above the sea, 
which would imply some subsequent uprising of the 
Island, in which the channel of the river was deepen- 
ed, and the present gully rents made. We may ap- 
ply to these changes of the river, the facts that Sir 
Charles Lyell represents attendant on the great shock 
of February, 1783. Not far from Soriano in Sicily 
innumerable fissures traversed the river plain in all 
directions, and absorbed the water until the argilla- 



19 



ceous substratum became soaked, so that a great 
part of it was reduced to a fluid paste. Strange 
alterations in the outline of the ground were the con- 
sequence, as the soil to a great depth was moulded 
into any form. The rivers of the neighbouring hills 
were precipitated into the hollow, and the small river 
of Caridi was entirely concealed for many days : and 
when at length it reappeared ; it had shaped for itself 
an entirely new channel (Sir Ch- Lyell's Principles 
of Geology, ch. xvi. book II.) The plain of Saint 
Catherine's in the occurrences of three hundred and 
fifty years present very similar facts to these inci* 
dents of the river plain of Soriano. 

There are two palms, phoenix daetilifera, near 
the walls of Fort Charles. They are, apparently 
from their growth, of an age anterior to the earth- 
quake. They are probably of a date co-eval with 
the settlement of the Spaniards. The numerous 
beautiful date-palms we see in Kingston and the 
plain of Liguanea are certainly Spanish. 



No one who has observed a boiled fish upon the 
tablecan have passed unremarked, the spinal column, 
with its upward and downward processes^ and the 
four transverse strips of flesh, adjusted alternately in 
different directions with strong semi-transparent ten- 
dons between. The spinous processes, proceeding 
from the vertebrae upward, support the dorsal fins, 
whilst the transverse processes down ward with curv- 
ed bones, encircle partially the bulk of the body. 

Without being ribs these latter resemble ribs. Those 



20 



placed far forward represents the proper thoracic ribs 
of fishes, but have no direct connexion with the spine* 
There are other rib-like bones behind. These are 
abdominal appendages very numerous in some fishes, 
such as the herrings ; and very few, — and those few 
conveniently large, in others such as the perches and 
labruses. They are wanting in several of the os- 
seous tribes, such as the diodons, and tetraodons, and 
are altogether non-existent in the cartilaginous fishes. 
It is from the fact that so many of our fishes belong 
to the percoid and labroid families, that we are so 
seldom troubled with what are called by the cook 
bony fishes. We suffer verv little annoyance from 
bones in our fish-dishes. 

One of the finest of the labroid fishes is the hog- 
fish, both for its flesh, thick, white and luscious, se- 
parating in large strata and its exemption from small 
abdominal bones. I shall describe it, as it is one of 
the commonest, and one of the best fishes, taken i» 
Port Royal, either by the fish-pot, or the line, the 
only source for supplying the market in the deep 
waters there. 

The lachnolaimus suiltus, has the general charac- 
ters of a true labrus. The villous membrane that 
covers part of the pharyngeals, and palate, gives it 
its scientific name, woolly-throat. "C'est decette par- 
ticularity que nons avons derive leur nom gencrique 
lachnoleme, de lachne (lanugo) et de laimos, (guttur ;) 
il signifie gorge laineuse, gorge veloute," observes 
Guvier. Histoire Naturelle des PoissonSj tome, xiii, 
liv. xvi. ch. vi.) 



Si 



There are several lachnolemes, ordinarily in the 
market, but only one properly called the hog fish, 
suillus. The most beautiful is the aigula, the aigrette 
of the windward islands. They are all sought after 
for the excellence of their flesh, " le bontee de leur 
chair," but one the caninus, is occasionally poisonous 
A black spot is found at the base of the dorsal fin, 
on all the species save the caninus, and though red is 
the tint of all, this one is red with less variability 
of hue than in any of the species. 

The hog-fish, suillus, has its scales red with yel- 
low at the base of each. The head purple above; 
the two lower jaws a clear blue, on an orange with 
red ripplings. There is a greenish blending with the 
gray and red borderings of the second dorsal fin . 
The pectoral fins are yellow, and the ventral of the 
same colour, with red spottings. The caudal is half 
blackened with a yellow crossing. The iris of the 
eye is red. The fish feeds among rocks, attains three 
and four feet of length, though two feet and a half 
is usually the longest dimension with us. Its habi- 
tation among rocks, renders it a frequent prize of the 
fish-pots in the broken deep-sea ground of Port Roy- 
al. The long dorsal fins, the spines elongated into 
three filaments, flaunting out like whip thongs, and 
the prominent curved teeth with the lengthened 
points of the tail, and of the extremity of the second 
dorsal and anal fin, are very marked peculiarities of 
the lachnolerae, being adaptatious to its labyrinthian 
life among the rocks. The hog-fish, is broader and 
flatter than any other of the labroides, and hap the 
fleshy lip protuberant, that has procured for these 



22 



hard spine-finned fish (acanthopterygians) their lip* 
name.* The flesh is most delicious, but its fullness 
and firmness, make it good for drying and smoking/ 
when too large for one day's dish. 

The macrurous decapods of the genus Soyllarous 
seem to me more common at Port Royal than else- 
where. The singular conformation of the external 
antennis distinguish them; but their broad flat square 
shape, their eyes situate far away from the median 
line, near to the angle of the large square carapace, 
the abdomen thick, and nearly equal in all its rings, 
terminating in a great fan-shaped fin, with soft and 
flexible foliations, are particularly noticeable. Out 
Scyllarus is the equinoxialis. Dumpy as it seems, 
h is the longest of the three genera of Scyllarians , 
•^-Scyllarus, Thenus, and Ibacns. 



Fn the midst of the difficulties that interpose at 
Port Royal to poultry keeping, why do not the peo- 
ple have recourse to pigeons! " Rocky and pre- 
cipitous cliffs, particularly those of the sea coast, 
perforated by caverns, either originating in the 
nature of the rock itself, or worn and hallowed out 

* Celui des labres reunit les especes & levres grandes, 
eharnues et comme doubles. * * * * Tous ces pois • 
sons se nourissent de petits coquillages, d'oursins, de erus- 
taces, dont ils peuvent facilement briser l'enveloppe dure 
et solide, par Taction de leurs pbaryngiens fortement 
dentis. lis vivent reunis, sans former des troupes noir.« 
breuses, sur les cotes rocheuses, a 1'abri des mouvemens 
violens des vagues.— Cuv. & Valen. Hist. Nat. des pcis- 
sons, tome xiii, livre xvi. cb. 1. 



23 



by the action of the waves, are the appropriate re- 
treats of the pigeon in its wild or natural state/' 
The range of the dove-cot species is very extensive, 
throughout all sea-bord countries. In the rocky 
islands of Africa and Asia and in those of the Medi- 
terranean, it swarms in incredible numbers. The 
rock pigeon, coluraba livia, reconciled to the cavern 
that man makes for him in the dove-cot, is the deni- 
zen of our poultry yard. It comes into voluntary 
subjection to its master^ who substitutes for it the 
artificial for the real cavern. At morning until 
evening, ofTand on, it leaves it to enjoy unrestrain- 
ed activity in the spacious heaven, and returns from 
time to time as much dependent on his own exer- 
tions as on his Master's bounty for support. It was 
the maritime habit of the rock -pigeon that fitted it 
to be the Messenger, in the Deluge, from the Ark. 
No arboreal dove would have been adapted for the 
duty of watching the retiring waters. None of the 
terrestrial pigeons had wings for the excursion, or, 
if they had, would have had instinct to face the 
ilood : but the rock pigeon seen in the Orkney 
islands, inhabiting the caves of the coast, and retir- 
ing deep into their retreats, beyond the nestling holes 
of the auks, gulls, and other aquatic fowls, familiar 
with the tidal incidents of a maritime shore would 
go forth to see if — " the waters were abated from off 
the face of the ground," and finding the straws and 
leaves lying high and dry, would do what we see 
them do in their nest-building time in our poultry 
yard, come in the evening with a leaf plucked in its 
mouth, as the first flooring mat for the expected 



24 



chick. It was this instinct that made it fit, when 
the winds of the flood had passed off, and the waters 
had assauged, and the fountains of the deep were 
stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained, 
and the streams were returning to their beds, to 
career over destruction, and come back to the ark, 
the messenger of mercy to a perishing world. 

In the Reverend Saul Dixon's amusing as well as 
instructive book " the Dove-cot and the Aviary," we 
have a collection of facts and anecdotes respect* 
ing pigeons that render it as fresh as a newspaper. 
There we find that the Russia pigeon of the Yap* 
mouth breeders, is a bird that has gone the voyage 
from the Mediterranean to Archangel. " The Yar- 
mouth sailors are very fond of buying pigeons in the 
Mediterranean ports, and they are great pets on board 
ship. They breed them in lockers and hen-coops, 
and they are sometimes allowed their liberty, and 
permitted to fly round about the vessel, while she is 
pursuing her course on a fine day." If we would 
have a thorough good account of the rock-pigeon in 
its maritime life and cavern home, take St. John's 
Tour in Sutherland. The blue rock-pigeons live in 
all the caves on the coast of Sutherland, and are to 
be seen flitting to and fro, from morning to night. 
" Although the wind had fallen," when the sports- 
men went thither for a day's sport, "the swell was 
tremendous, dashing the spray half way up the rocks. 
"Jt was a curious sight," he says, " to see the rock- 
pjgeonsflying rapidly into the caves, sometimes dash- 
ing like lightning through the very spray of the 
breakers, scarcely topping the crests of the waves 5 



25 



which roared and raged through the narrow caverns 
where these beautiful birds breed. The rock-pigeons 
were very numerous, and constantly flying between 
their wild but secure breeding places and the small 
fields about Durness. He shot a few of them, and 
found their crops full of green food, such as clover, 
the leaves of the oat, &c. A number of small shells 
were also in the crop of every bird." There was a 
fact for a sea-shore dove-cot. Take again an extract 
from Colonel Napier's amusing and spirited " Wild 
Sports of Europe" cited by Dixon. The scene is in 
the vicinity of the decayed palace of Marfa, at the 
western extremity of Malta. " On learning that 
our professed vocation was to wage war on the beasts 
of the earth, the fowls of the air, and fishes of the sea, 
the old pensioner, who was in charge of the place, 
and was known by the name of Sans Facon, ex- 
pressed his regret that it was too early in the season 
for the tunny fishery, which he described as being 
well worth seeing, and which has been celebrated in 
history even from the times of the Phoenicians. He 
however proposed to accompany us on a sporting 
excursion, and promised to indicate the usual abodes 
of the blue pigeon, which in great numbers frequents 
all the precipitous cliffs forming the boundary of this 
rocky coast. We accordingly sailed out, and pro- 
ceeding in a southerly direction towards the cliffs, 
went over ground such as in all my wanderings, I 
had never before witnessed. * * .' * * Leaving 
this scene of desolation, this wide bed of lava and 
volcanic deposit, we gradually ascended, as the 
abrupt and rocky shore now assumed a still bolder 
c 



26 



appearance, and rose to stately cliffs, at whose foci 
broke the foaming surge with a dull and sullen sound, 
subdued and deadened to our ears, by the fearful 

ht we had attained above the angry and boiling 
billows. This was the resort of our feathered foes, 
who started from their nests by the stones hurled 
over the perpendicular sides of the precipice by old 
Sans Facon, afforded us capital shots; but as all our 
victims found a watery grave, we were soon con- 
vinced that to secure the killed and wounded a boat 
would be necessary, in which to coast along under 

cliffs ; and it was now too late to think of such 
an accessory." (The Dove cot and the Aviary, page 

-9. 
Nature has endowed the pigeon with instincts 
enough for every difficulty of living. Their natural 
siticn to range far and wide for subsistence, — - 
their industry and labour in the enjoyment of inde* 
pendence, enable them to calculate their means, and 
to estimate them by their wants, and if they 6hd the 

ision at home scanty, they seek supplies abroad. 
If they suffer inconvenience from the distance at 
which food is to be found, to make up for what is 
wanting at home, they abandon the distant habita- 
tion and affiliate themselves with some more acces- 
sible community. Their independence renders them 
always adaptive in their habits, and nobody need 
tear difficulties which the natural instincts of the bird 
are not sufficient to overcome. 

" Pigeons are thirsty creatures : they like the 
neighbourhood of water, and seem heartily to enjoy 
the act of drinking" This seems to militate against 



27 



the fitness of a waterless place like Port Royal, for 
pigeon feeding. But a careful attention to the 
supply of fresh fluid, will be always an attraction 
homeward, in their farthest wanderings. Every 
body has observed, at least we think so, if they have 
been observers at all, that pigeons drink as no other 
birds drink. They plunge their heads into the fluid, 
nearly up to the eyes, and gulp it down by full 
draughts, not by sips like cocks and hens. They do 
not raise the head while quaffing, but draw in the 
water as cattle do at a horse pond. Under ordinary 
circumstances they pertinaciously stick to their old 
abode, and under an economy that supplies them 
with fresh water, where fresh water is not otherwise 
to be got they would prove the most patient of home- 
lovers, magnifying its comforts by the multitudinous 
privations they suffer away from its sweet small lux- 
uries. It should not, however, be forgotten, that 
there are care and caution to be attended to, m se- 
lecting a location for a colony in which the life raast 
partake more of the wild incidents than are actually 
the lot of the domesticated tenants of the dove -cos. 
The following passage from Varro, which MrDisoo, 
gives and translates in his text, should never be lost. 
sight 6f. " If ever you should establish a dovery, 
you should consider the birds your own although 
they were wild. For two sorts of pigeons are 
usually kept in a dovery ; the one belonging to rural 
districts, and as others call it a rock-pigeon, which 
is kept in towers, and among the beams and rafters 
(columinibus) of a farm-house, and which is, on that 
account, named columba, since, from natural timidity, 



28 



it seeks the highest parts of the roof; whence it 
happens that the rustic pigeon sespecially seek for 
towers, to which they may at their own pleasure fly 
from the fields and return thither. The second kind 
of pigeons is more quiet ; and contented with the food 
given it at home, it accustoms itself to feed within 
the limits of the gate. This kind is of a white 
colour principally, but the country sort is without 
white or variegated colours. From these two origi* 
nal stocks, a third mixed or mongrel kind is bred 
for the sake of the produce." (page 151.) The stay- 
at-home races should be avoided in hard feeding 
grounds, and the stock established should be some 
of those Mediterranean birds, which the Yarmouth 
sailors take with them in their Russian voyages.— 
They should be Russians with all the adhesive cou- 
rage of Russians. 

On looking at an ordinary osseous fish, there is a 
relation between the several fins, which we are sure 
to notice. It is that there are two of these organs 
that go in pairs, while all the others are single. — 
The pairs, the pectoral and ventral fins, represent 
the anterior and posterior organs of support and 
progression in the higher series of vertebrate ani- 
mals, ljut the other accessory fins are additional ap- 
pendages represented by no rudimentary members 
in higher structures. 

The ventral fins, though not constant in all fishes, 
represent the hinder extremities of mammalia, as 
much as the pectoral represent the arms and hands. 
«' The relative magnitude'of the arms of fishes, and 
their constancy, compared with the posterior mem- 



29 



bers, corresponds with their great size in the embryo 
of higher classes, and their preceding the legs in 
their development from the trunk." — (Professor 
Grant's : Comp. Anat. ch. 1 sec. v. p. 65.) 

The pectoral and ventral fins being limbs analo- 
gous to the extremities of quadrupeds, the other 
accessory appendages to the spinal column are inter- 
spinous processes, and are given to fishes for the 
purpose of directing and keeping steady the body. 
Their position does not render them powerful for 
more than inclining it from side to side, and pre- 
venting it from rolling round. Except in the radial 
expansion of the caudal vertebra usually spoken of 
as the tail, they are not directly employed in pro- 
gression or turning. 

' The fins which are in pairs are capable of four 
motions ; namely, those of flexion and extension, 
md also those of expanding and closing the rays ; 
for each of which motions appropriate muscles are 
provided : and, indeed, each ray is furnished with 
a distinct muscular apparatus for its separate motion ; 
ind these smaller muscles regulate with great nicety 
all the movements of the fins, expanding and closing 
them like a fan, according as their action is to be 
strengthened or relaxed. This feathering of the 
fin, as it may be called, takes place in most fishes, 
and is particularly observable in the tail of the esox, 
or pike tribe. Each ray of these fins, indeed, is 
furnished with a distinct muscular apparatus, for its 
separate motion." (Anim. and Veget. Phys : vol. 1 
>h. vii. part 1 sec. 2.) 



30 



This extract from that part of Dr. Reset's Bridge- 
water Treatise, which treats of animal physiology, 
is a lucid statement of motion in the fins of fishes; 
but, as our object is not merely to direct attention 
to the motion of these organs, but to their analogy 
to the limbs of quadrupeds, and their difference Of 
power and agency with their modifications to their 
several purposes, we therefore go on with a further 
extract describing their constructive adaptation for 
movement in their peculiar element ; 

" Whatever analogy may exist in the structure of 
the fins of fishes and the feet of quadrupeds, there 
is none in the manner in which they are instrumen- 
tal in effecting progressive motion. The great agent 
by which the fish is impelled forwards is the tail : 
the fins, which correspond to the extremities of land 
animals, are useful chiefly for the purposes of turn- 
ing, stopping, or inclining the body, and for retain- 
ing it in its proper position. The single fins, or 
those which are situated in a vertical plane, passing 
through the axis of the body (the mesial plane.) 
prevent the rolling of the body, while the fish darts 
forward in its course. The fins that are in* pairs, 
(that is the pectoral and the ventral fins,) by their 
alternate flexions and extensions, act like oars ; 
while they are capable at the same time of expand- 
ing and of closing the rays, like the opening and 
shutting of a fan, according as their action is re- 
quired to be effective or the contrary. All these auxi- 
liary instruments are chiefly serviceable in modify- 
ing the direction and adjusting the variations of force 



I 



SI 



derived from the impulse of the tail. They are em- 
ployed, also, in suddenly checking or stopping the 
motion, and giving it a more rapid acceleration. — 
But still the tail is the most powerful of the instru- 
ments for progression, being at once a vigorous oar. 
an accurate rudder and a formidable weapon of 
oUence." 

This is a clear and brief description of the me- 
chanical function of fishes' fins, but there is a com- 
prehensive view of the skeleton of fishes, which I 
would take, as more determinate yet. I do not ob- 
serve that physiologists have given very prominent 
attention to it, and I should not have been led to 
notice it in the large way in which I refer to it now, 
had not, the possession of two hippocampuses, or 
sea-horses, as they are ealJel, remarkably fixed my 
attention, specially, to the structure and power of 
the spinal column unaided or variously aided by fins. 

The spinal column is the essential instrument in 
the propulsion of fishes. It is the acting power re- 
gulating the accessory motion of the fins. In the 
several species lengthened out into the snake form, 
as in the eels and the cutlass-fish, the body is con- 
ducted entirely by the spine. The power of the 
posterior extremity is increased from side to side,, 
by the bordering fin, adding to the skulling power 
of the column, but the essential instrument of motion 
is the flexibility of the column itself. 

I think the best and simplest way of considering 
the organization of a fish, is by the relation of the 
spinal column and the accessory fins to modes of life 



32 



and locomotion. If we examine two such extremely 
dissimilar creatures as the eel and the sunfish, we 
see the peculiar caudal expansion dispensed with in 
both, and the dorsal and abdominal appendages unit- 
ed together as a continuous border. Now nothing 
can seem so little in relation, one to the other in 
structure as the two fishes here mentioned. The 
modification of the accessory fins is, however, the 
same, the difference is the elongation of the column 
into the serpentine length in the eel, and the contrac- 
tion of it, into the dimensions and shape of an oblate 
spheroid in the sunfish ; the usual skeleton mechan- 
ism that stands in the stead of the organs of pro- 
gression and support, being reduced to mere rudi- 
ments. I shall advert to two or three other instances 
unlike the two preceding examples in which these 
accessory organs, are specially arranged and expand- 
ed to meet peculiarities in habit. The first I shall 
advert to, is the gymnetrus, a fish totally deprived of 
the anal fin. The dorsal fin is removed forward to 
the crown of the head, where it stands erect like a 
fan. The caudal is similarly expanded upward in 
an erect fan-like form at the upper angle of the tail 
vertebra, the intermediate space all along the back, 
being a continuous soft-rayed dorsal fin. {Example 
Gymnetrus falx. Cuvier's Animal Kingdom : Fishes Griff. 
Ed. page 209.) The next fish I refer to, is the pter- 
acles, in which the dorsal and anal fins are of im- 
mense development, being each twice the breadth of 
the body of the fish, the tail, and pectoral fins pre- 
serving the ordinary dimensions. {Example pteracles 



88 



vilifer : Cuviers Animal Kingdom, fyc. p. 206.) I would 
notice some of the chgetodons as those in which the 
dorsal and abdominal rays are not so much remark* 
able for their expansion, as for the angle at which 
they are set. They become by their horizontality so 
many susidiary aids to the tail alone, and I would 
refer to the platax Gaimardi, (Owner's Animal King- 
dom, &c. p. 176.) as a remarkable illustration of this 
arrangement of what are ordinarily the vertical fins ; 
and I would point out again the loricaria cirrhosa 
as a fish in which the lobes of the tail are divided 
between a slender filament of prodigious length, and 
a five-rayed membrane, near the dorsal fin, seeming 
mere modifications of the tail. Here we see the co- 
lumn lengthenedand shortened, andthe accessory fins 
altered to adjust the necessary directive force, to the 
elongation and contraction ; and to the consequent 
habits of the fish. Here the alterations are made to 
suit the specialities of the spinal column. 

In fishes, the head and body are in a line : — no 
neck and chest intervene. All that framed bulk 
in which are contained the lungs and heart of man, 
is thurst up into ffhe circle in which we circumscribe 
the fish's head. There the blade bone, or scapula, 
broad and flat occurs sometimes attached to the spi- 
nal column, and sometimes to the cranial bones, or 
buried in the substance of the flesh about what would 
be the shoulder in the mammalian series of animals, 
without any other attachment to either the vertebra 
or the head. In this narrow space, however, the fish 
has a structure of a higher character than mamma- 
lians, inasmuch as it has a fuller developed structure 



-34 



partially than the mammalian tribes. The bones 
that cross immediately behind the head, constituting 
arches, below and behind those formed by the lower 
jnw and lingual bones, are not alone bones that cor- 
respond to the collar bone, and clavicle of mammalia, 
but to those of the merry- thought, or furcula proper 
to birds. In this respect, if we classified by the 
doctrine that raises the animal to a higher series 
and degrades it to a lower, according os the bony 
structure is more or less developed, fishes would 
stand in a higher range of life than mammiferous 
animals, for in them there is no corracoid bone or 
furcula, or only the rudimentary traces of it in the 
corracoid process, while in the hoofed quadruped the 
clavicle or collar bone, is altogether wanting. So 
far it may be truly said, the fish-nature exhibits a 
higher development ; but, we no sooner quit these 
bones to trace the representative hand in the pectoral 
fin than we find them as much behind in structure, 
as they seemed in advance, by the possession of the 
clavicle and the furcula. When we look for the arm 
bone or humerus, we find it quite rudimentary. The 
two bones of the fore-arm seem represented by no 
interposing bone. The shoulder-joint and elbow- 
joint are in general almost one and the same. " The 
two bones of the fore-arm, the ulna and radius are, 
in some few fishes only, so constructed as to roll with 
tolerable freedom on each other, exactly in the same 
way as they roll on each other in man, in the action 
of rotating the hand. It is by this means tbey have 
the power of changing the direction of the flat part 
of their pectoral fin, during its play in the water, a 



35 



power which is so conducive to the full use of thin 
organ." (Dr. Bushman on the Locomotion of Fishes, 
Naturalists' Lib. vol. ii. Ichthyology.) Now these 
two bones, which are so important in their offices 
when they are found in any fish so constructed as to 
rotate freely, are firmly united together in most rep- 
tiles, in all birds, and in many quadrupeds: so that 
with the disadvantage of a less advanced develop- 
ment in the absence of the arm-bone, or in a should- 
er-joint, and elbow-joint, one and the same, here 
certain fishes have the advantage of many of the 
(superior tribes of animals. 

To the ulna and radius when this adaptation exists 
in the way we have mentioned, are attached the 
several bones of the wrist, quite corresponding to those 
of the wrist of man. From these proceed the long 
radiating bones equally corresponding to those of the 
hand and fingers of man. These bones constituting 
the radial frame -work of the pectoral fin, are long 
and numerous. If increased dimensions, and addi- 
tional numbers to the phalanges over and above the 
five-fold system of the human hand, give title to a 
higher organization — the fish among development- 
theorists would be a very exalted, as well as distin- 
guished member of the vertebrata. 

In the preceding remarks, [ have endeavoured to 
shew the subordination of the several appendages 
and limbs to the proportions of the vertebral column. 
The changes they suffer to obliteration, when they 
are unnecessary auxiliaries to the spinal frame, is 
manifested in none of the fishes with such marked 
speciality as in the syngnathians, the pipe fishes, and 



§6 



the hippocampuses, but the one is organised for flexi- 
bility and the other for very limited power of vary- 
ing the horizontality of the column. I see nothing 
of aquatic life capable of being looked into, within 
the narrow space of a basin, more interesting than 
the^air of hippocampuses brought to me. They 
illustrate movement by the action of the vertebral 
column, almost to the exclusion of ev,ery accessory 
aid peculiar to fishes. 

Fishes are the lowest of the vertebrata. We have 
seen, in the extract I have made from Professor 
Grant's comparative Anatomy, that they represent in 
the excessive development of the anterior limbs, the 
embryotic peculiarities of the quadruped. The su- 
peradded appendages to the vertebral column being 
employed in different animals for varied and dis- 
tinct purposes, are many of them wanting in given 
orders and genera. We might expect that fishes, 
from their low position in the vertebrate series, would 
present some remarkable evidences of the deficien- 
cies of the accessory composition, and the indepen- 
dent power of the central axis ; and so they do. 

The adaptation of the spinal column for flexibility 
without any versatile appendages will be most inter- 
estingly seen in the hippocampus or sea-horse.- — 
There is a dorsal fin, but it is very subordinate in 
its functions : there is an anal fin, exceedingly rudi- 
mentary but found only in one sex, the female. 
There is besides all this sexual peculiarity in these 
fishes, which reverses the economy of gestation, 
The male have a pouch into which the female injects 
the ova, The eggs are fertilized by impregnation 



37 



in that marsupial sack, and brought forth by the 
paternal parent. The form of the hippocampus, and 
the flexible power of the vertebral column are special 
adaptations in the fish to this economy. 

No one looking at the hard dry specimens of the 
hippocampus in the naturalists' cabinet would sup- 
pose that fish to be of a structure peculiarly tegumen» 
iary and yielding. Fishes in the integument enve- 
loping thenij secrete a solid material that takes the 
form of extravascular lamina? embedded in the living 
and vascular cutis ; that is, they are covered with 
scales. This i3 the exoskeleton ; the osseous frame 
work proper to the vertebrate body being the 
endosheleton. 

The spines of all fishes are indubitable derivations 
of the cuticular exoskeleton. Whether the spines 
be fixed by moveable articulations to the body, and 
raised or depressed by muscles inserted into their 
bones as in the mechanism of the vertical fins, or 
whether, they are mere points, enormously developed 
and serrated for wounding desperately, they indicate 
peculiar structures only of the external covering to 
the vascular and living skin to which their under 
surfaces are adherent. " The most usual form of 
the cuticular covering of fishes," remarks Professor 
Rymer Jones, with admirable descriptive brevity, — 
" is that of imbricated scales, with which the whole 
exterior of the body is compactly encased, as in a 
suit of armour. Such an investment is admirably 
adapted to their habits and economy. The dense 
and corneous texture of the scales, impermeable to 
water, defends their soft bodies from maceration 

D 



38 



while from their smooth polished exterior and beau- 
tiful arrangement, they ensure the best possible 
resistance from the surrounding medium as the fish 
glides along/' (Animal Kingdom, ch. xxvi. section 541.) 
Now in the syngnatbidse, in all which fishes, the 
sexual economy is so strangely ordered as I have said 
it is in the hippocampus, the whole body is covered 
with a strong armour, composed of broad dermal 
plates, moving in protuberant fibrous folds of the 
living cutis. This structure is the very reverse of 
that of the trunk-fishes, the ostracionidce, There 
the integument becomes a strong box made of poly- 
gonal plates, set out like a tiled pavement, with no 
cuticular interstitial folds. The tail and the fins 
alone are moveable in trunk-fishes ; the rest is as 
inflexible as a steam-engine boiler. The whole frame 
is moveable in the hippocampus. 

The female hippocampus, when the abdomen is 
enlarged with eggs, opens the male marsupial pouch, 
by means of the small anal fin of five rays, an ap- 
pendage not existing in the male, and transfers 
from herself to the being to become the father, the 
ova for fecundation. Now to accomplish the pa- 
rental office in this reversal of reproduction, by 
which the female becomes the intromittant sex, and 
the male, we may say the child-bearing, parent the 
power of intertwining with each other is assigned 
to the fish-structure, and the highest degree of flexi- 
bility is given to the spinal column. I know few 
objects more calculated to excite interest in a fugi- 
tive observer of nature, or to occupy more plea- 
sureably the attention of a sea-side invalid confined 



39 



.o his chamber than a few hippocampuses in a basin 
of sea water. Their graceful horse-like forms, 
their active movements, their vigorous flexibility, 
their constant tendency to caress each other by 
folding themselves on one another, and twining 
together, are actions so unlike those that charaterize 
fishes, that they are at once novel and amusing pets. 
The most graphic description I have met with in 
my reading of the habits of these fishes is contained 
in a communication of Mr Lukis of Guernsey; it 
will be found in the second volume of Yarrel's 
British Fishes, at Lophobranchii : Syngnathidse, 
describing the short-nosed hippocampus — hippo- 
campus brevirostr.is. When he wrote, a pair had 
been living twelve days in a glass-vessel — " an 
appearance of search for a resting place induced 
me," he says, " to consult their wishes by placing 
sea-weed and straws in the vessel :•— -the desired 
effect was obtained, and has afforded rae much t© 
reflect upon in their habits. They now exhibit many 
of their peculiarities, and few subjects of the deep 
hiivc displayed, in prison more sport or more intel- 
ligence. When swimming about they maintain a 
vertical position, but the tail is ready to grasp what 
ever meats it in the water, quickly entwines in any 
direction round the weeds, and when fixed, the 
animal intently watches the surrounding objects, and 
darts at its prey with great dexterity. When both 
approach each other, they often twist their tails 
together, and struggle to separate, or attach them- 
selves to the weeds ; this is done by the under part 
oi their cheek or chin, which is also used for rnisinc 



40 



the body when a new spot is wanted for the tail to 
entwine afresh. The eyes move independently of 
each other, as in the chameleon : this, with the bril- 
liant changeable irredescence about the head, and 
its blue bands, forcibly remind the observer of that 
animal" (YarrelY Fishes, vol. ii. page 454.) Al\ 
this diversity of bodily accommodation the hippo- 
campuses effect by the flexibility and pliancy of the 
vertebral column, the fins being partly obliterated 
and partly rudimentary, and the tail without any 
radial termination. It seems to have a sensitive 
power of adaptation that reminds one of the pre* 
hensHe tail of the Ateles monkey. 

A person's attention is sure to be arrested by the 
sea horse's eyes. They are low in the head ; but 
their golden twinkle, the iris being resplendent yel- 
low, and their place in the midst of what seems a 
horse's head in harness will be remarked ; otherwise 
amid their sameness of hue, their umber coloured 
lines and depressions, they would hardly excite 
notice. On looking at both eyes attentively as they 
twinkle their independent movement will be visible. 

Our hippocampuses have not the brilliancy of the 
European species. They have no variable tint ; no 
blue dispersed over the head, body, or tail — our 
specimens are longirostris, if such a distinctive name 
is acknowledged by naturalists. I do not otherwise 
know our species. 

Every body recolleets the story of the middies, 
the new-comer, and the old stager, and the pleasant 
absurdity about the Port Royal goats, and the 
imitation bundle of grass. The goats are not 



41 



nitled to go at large. They are all tethered and 
• and they are as unacquainted with grass as 
Smollett's sage, whose antipathy to the country made 
him faint when he saw a cauliflower. That wor-. 
fby's little familiarity with grain compelled him, in 
the face of a whole company to confess a plate of 
hominy to be the best rice-pudding he had ever ate. 
He however affected this delicacy to hide the fact 
that he was the son of a cottager, was born under 
a hedge, and had many years run wild among asses 
on a common. Our Port Royal goats really know 
nothing of green-fields, but by the patches of ver° 
they see on the far-off mountains. When you 
wonder by what means they acquire flesh, and make 
milk for the household, precious at just a penny- 
half penny for a thimbleful, you will discover that 
they are fed on all sorts of vegetable odds and ends. 
A tin-pan of tamarind husks, affords them little 
bits of mumbling, like Shakespeare's remainder bis- 
cuit after a voyage. The story goes that two mid- 
dies going along, drew up at a knot of sleek-looking 
goats in the street. Bless me, exclaimed the new- 
comer, how do these animals live ; there is not a 
blade cf grass to be seen in Port Royal. Oh, says 
the old stager, I'll tell you how it is; they put on 
them a pair of green spectacles, and set before them 
a bundle of shavings from the Dock -yard, and it 
passes with them for grass. This is simply a plea- 
sant absurdity, but Pennant refers us to a fact o~ 
the authority I think of Nicholas Hasselgreen in the 
Amocnitates Academicas, which sounds not less 



42 



incredible. " The capra*hircus, in the vast diversity 
of regions to which it has been accommodated by 
naturalization, is found in Europe as high as Ward- 
huys in Norway, where they breed and run out the 
whole year, having in winter only the shelter of 
hovels. In that season they feed on moss and the 
bark of fir trees and even on the logs cut for fuel" In 
the same work from which we get this extract we 
are informed that the Scythian antelope, the suhah, 
the saiga of Buffon, an allied animal to the goat, 
inhabits the dreary open deserts about the Caspian 
Sea, where salt springs abound. They feed on the 
salt, and acrid and aromatic plants of the country, 
and grow in summer time very fat. In the spring 
they divide in flocks, and return northward at the 
same time as the wandering Tartars change their 
quarters. On the shores opposite Port Royal, two 
classes of goats may be seen : those of the salina s , 
and these of the crags. Those of the salinas lead 
as hard a life as the Caspian saiga. They wander 
daily to the salt grounds, in several flocks, and 
subsist on acrid herbs. Those of the Heaithshire, 
crags and cliffs, are absolutely wild, confining them- 
selves to the crests of the hills, and enjoying a pre- 
carious existence among wild pintadoes, quails, and 
iguanas. Sometimes the sportsman who goe3 after 
them, starts the peafowl, become a maroon bird, in 
the same wilderness of thickets ; and there he hears 
that sweet singer, the musteline thrush, confined 
to these hills and the neighbouring savannas. No 
animal seems more prone to varieties than the goat 



48 



save and except the dog. " Caprse tamen in pluri- 
mas similitudir.es transfigurantur," is the observa- 
tion of Pliny. "Sunt eapras, sunt rapicapaa, sed 
ilia Alpes, base transmarini situs raittunt," (liatu- 
ralis Historic^ lib. viii. oh. liii.) 



The annual egg-gathering visit, which the boat- 
men of Port Royal make to the Pedro keys, we may 
set down as a remnant of Indian life. In the work 
entitled " the discovery of America, by Christopher 
Columbus, compiled from his papers by his son Don 
Ferdinand," we are informed that on the 13th of 
November 1492, the Discovery squadron weighing 
from the Rio de Mares, Cuba, stood to the eastward, 
to search for the island called Bohio by the Indians, 
and coming to an anchor among some high .raised 
islets on the coast, found them to be places visited 
by the Indians at certain seasons of the year, for 
supplies of fish and birds. " The islands," Colum- 
bus says, " were not inhabited,, but there were seen 
the remains of many fires which had been made by 
the fishermen ; for it afterwards appeared that the 
people were in use to go over in great numbers in 
their canoes to these islands, and to a great number 
of other uninhabited islets in these seas, to live up- 
on fish, which they catch in great abundance, and 
upon birds and crabs, and other things which they 
find on the land. The Indians follow this employ- 
ment of fishing and bird catching according to the 
seasons, sometimes in one island, sometimes in ano- 
ther as a person changes his diet, when weary of 



44 



living on one kind of food." {Part u. Booh ii. clul, 
sec. o.) 

From the lighthouse on the Port Royal palisades 
to Portland in Vere, a line encloses a system of coast 
islands, reefs, banks, and shoals colonized by nume- 
rous birds, and fishes. Each kind has its oven locality. 
Pelican key and Pigeon island never interchange in- 
habitants, and the bank that gives the king fish^ 
gives neither the snapper nor the grouper. South- 
ward from Portland, at a distance of some few leagues, 
the great Pedro bank is reached stretching near a 
hundred miles. There are islets at each extremity, 
but the group that attracts the egg- gatherers every 
year, are the keys distinguished as the Pedros at its 
eastern end. We shall loiter a little to describe a 
living world there that nfust have been a great 
attraction to the aboriginal Indians, in those perio- 
dical junketings that came under the notice of 
Columbus. 

The Port Royal boats bound for the egg-harvest, 
bring to at the outermost of the Portland keys, and 
start at midnight from there, to gain with a favour* 
able breeze in 14 or 15 hours the shelter of the Pe- 
dro?, and to be snug at anchor long before sundown. 
The vessels in their voyage steer for a single rock in 
fathomless water, the Isla Sola of the Spanish maps. 
It rises about 30 or 40 feet out of the sea like a cas- 
tle in ruins, over which the surf breaks fiercely ; and 
in about five or six hours after making it, they an- 
chor within what are properly called the keys. 

There are numerous outlying rocks just above and 



45 



beneath the water, between the Pedro shoal and tiie 
open sea ; on these the winds and the currents drive 
a heavy surf. The spots properly called the islands- 
are seven in number, and vary from forty to some 
three and four acres in size. They are upthrown 
masses of broken coral and shell cemented by calca- 
reous sand, washed upon rocky ledges above the sea. 
The breakers shift with the shifting winds, rolling 
these fragmentary deposits on before them. By the 
regularity of their change of action, they have done 
the work of accumulation pretty equally -on all 
sides : they have raised a wall all around the islands, 
and left the centres hollow. 

From time to time storms of unusual violence 
have carried the heaped -up coral and sand suddenly, 
and in thick layers, over portions of the islands 
where the dung of the sea birds had accumulated for 
years, and these irruptions have made intermediate 
deposits of animal matter and cemented rock. St is 
evident from the prevalence of this succession of 
deposits within the hollow centres of the islets that 
the sea has washed in the fragmentary materials of 
the outer margins, by a more than ordinary rise cf 
the waters, and laid them in pretty equal strata at 
distant intervals of time, so that the centres have 
risen in height as the sea walls have been built and 
cemented up. The animal deposits which may be 
characterized as loosely cohering urate of lime are 
sometimes found two feet beneath the strata of 
cemented coral and shells, and run about an inch 
or an inch and a half thick. 

Immediately within the islands, the water shoals, 



46 



and mnkesa bank called the Vibora by the Spaniards ; 
it runs to the Cascabel rock, ninety odd miles west- 
wards bristled with reefs and sunken racks having 
a depth of from 7 to 17 fathoms. Easterly winds, 
that is the trade winds, veering southward and north- 
ward, for determinate portions of the year, roll 
constant billows over it. Westerly breezes, varying 
northerly and southerly, bring tremendous gales and 
heavy swells. The rough agency of all these move- 
ments ha*j heaped up the sands and the corals, and 
shells, cementing them into rock and giving, the 
island an elevation of from 15 to 20 feet. 

The vegetation on these islands is stunted suriana?, 
among whose tough and twisted branches the birds 
find nestling places. To these lonely islets resort 
thousands and tens of thousands of sea-fowl.. As 
soon as visitors land, myriad of birds are upon the 
wing in all directions. Some flocks rise in circling 
flight high up into the air, and descending again in 
the same dense numbers as they rose^ settle in more 
remote places; others break away hurriedly, and fly 
in a wide sweep far around, but return again hastily 
to the rocks they had quitted, reconciled to bear 
with the disturbance. The turmoil and hubbub of 
the thousands of birds thus suddenly put upon the 
wing, overpower for a moment the roar of the 
breakers, and darken the air like the sudden passing 
of a cloud. 

The constant inhabitants of the rocks are several 
species of the booby gannets, terns, gulls, and petrel 
— and the frigate pelican. The frigate birds pre- 
serve their predeliction for rapine amid the teeming 



47 



plenty of the waters, and subsist by pillaging the 
gulls and gannets. The migratory visitors are ducks, 
herons, plovers, snipes, sand-pipers, curlews, and 
ibises, with the several falcons that follow them, 
In the autumnal movement of these birds towards 
the equatorial regions, they would be found steering 
from north to south, but at the time when the egg* 
gatherers visit the islets, they are seen coming from 
the south, just resting and departing north. The 
successive months of March, April, and May, are 
those of the egg harvest. 

The Keys are open to all adventurers, 'but the 
egg-gathering is regulated by a custom which recog- 
nises the first coming vessels as commanding for the 
the season. The second vessel in seniority is called 
the commodore, the first being styled the admiral. 
They have a code of laws, to which, in a spirit of 
honourable compliance all are expected to shew 
obedience, and in ease of any infraction of the 
obligations thus voluntarily imposed upon themselves, 
a jury selected from the several vessels try com* 
plaints, and, with due formality, inflict punishment 
for offences. 

The south-west is the principal of the Pedro keys. 
The stay of the birds that resort there to breed is 
prolonged by the successive lo'ss of the eggs they 
lay. Each loss is a stimulus to a fresh act of pair- 
ing ; a new lot of eggs being the results, possibly in 
number equal to the former lot, but probably less, 
as the latter deposits are a forced production at the 
expense of the vigour of the bird, without any 
additional strength to the constitution by the 



48 



increased nourishment of food, the process by which 
domesticated birds in changing their habits are led 
to lay a continuance of eggs for a long season.— 
The egg-gatherers are careful observers of the pro 
gross of incubation and take only the eggs they 
know to Tbe fresh laid. These are a part of the 
regulations they require to be observed, or the con- 
stant depredations committed on the birds would 
fatally thin their numbers. 

Without going into the discussion of naturalists, 
who see in the different colours of eggs a certain 
relation to circumstances favourable to concealment, 
it may be observed that the blotched egg, laid by 
the hydrochelidon fuliginosa, properly distinguished 
as the egg-lird, is found among sticks and dried 
leaves of the suriana, whilst the white eggs of the 
boobies and petrels, are deposited in hollows of the 
coral rocks amid sand and chalky dung There is 
one curious coincidence between the eggs of the 
noddy, megalopterus stolidus, and the peculiarities 
of the nest that must not however be unremarked. 
The elaborate pile of sticks slightly hollowed, in 
which they deposit their eggs, is always embellished 
with broken sea-shells, speckled and spotted like 
the eggs. Audobon records the same occurrence 
in the nests of the noddy-terns he inspected in the 
Florida Keys. The obvious suggestion for this 
curious prevalence of instinct is deceptiveness, 
arising from similarity between the egg-shell and 
the sea shell. The nests are pillaged by what is 
called the laughing-gull, the xema atricilla, not 
the ridibundus ; the numerous empty shells lying 



49 



among the rocks being always set down to the pre- 
datory visits of the laughing gull. 

South -West Key and the other sandy islets around 
it, are beside, annually resorted to by the fishermen 
in the turtling season for a different harvest of eggs. 
The turtle, chelone miclas, visits these shoals to 
deposit their eggs in the dry sand and leave them 
to the fostering influence of the sun. They repeat 
their layings thrice, at the interval of two or three 
weeks, laying a hundred at a time. Some experi- 
ence is necessary to trace the place of deposit, for 
the eggs are always laid in the night ; but few of 
them escape the detection of the turtler. 

There is no fresh water on any of these keys.—- ■ 
They are surrounded by extensive reefs. There is 
tolerable anchorage for small craft in the south-east 
group upon a sandy bottom, broken by occasional 
rocks, on the lee side, when the usual eastern trade 
wind is blowing. From any other quarter they are 
proachable. It is not merely danger but de- 
struction, to be surprised by westerly breezes, when 
among them. The hazard of gaining the shore amid 
swell and surf, except on the lee-side, with the ordi- 
nary sea breeze will be seen by a description of Seal 
Key. 

Some three miles out to leeward of the south- west 
key lies Seal Key. [t may be about three acres in 
extent. Its height is twenty feet. There is no 
approach to this islet, except in very fine weather, 
on account of what the seamen call "broken ground," 
sunken reefs on which the surf breaks with fury. 
At the best of times, landing is not effected without 

E 



50 



peril : a continual sea rushes up the shore. Oppor? 
tunity is watched to put the canoe on the top of a 
surge undulating into the landing place. The canoe 
drives into the shelve on the breaking billow, and 
when aground an active and strong person leaps out 
and retains it, and not alone prevents it from reced- 
ing with the retiring wave, but drags it up, and keeps 
it from being filled with the succeeding surge. There 
is no vegetation on this key. The booby-birds re- 
pair there, but do not breed there. It is the con- 
gregating place of the seals alone. 

The natural difficulty attendant upon all access to 
Seal Key, sufficiently accounts for the meagre infor- 
mation about seals which prevails among the host of 
egg-gatherers who annually resort to these islands 
and shoals. Address in landing must be combined 
with hardihood and perseverance, for frequently be- 
fore a footing can be gained, the seals, the objects of 
attraction, have escaped to the waters, and continue 
to avoid the shore as long as intruders remain upon 
the island. A party who landed there on a visit 
made in 1846, surprized some five seals ashore. — • 
They succeeded in immediately heading a bull (the 
epithet by which the male seal is distinguished) — 
both big and burly, and killed him. He proved to be 
an aged patriarch, with teeth nearly worn to the 
stumps, and a hide gashed and scared with scars, got 
in many a fierce fight, and about ten feet in length. 

In the scramble which the seal makes to regain 
the water, nothing is to be remarked, but the 
violence and impatience with which he jerks his body 
forward, but when he plunges from the shore into 



51 



tne sea, it is no small treat to see the suddenness 
with which the uncouth animal, so unwieldy and 
helpless on land, becomes gracefully alert in the 
ocean. The command with which he strikes through 
the water, the velocity with which he cleaves the 
flood, the ease with which he winds the mazes of 
the rocks, and dashes forward into the .hidden 
recesses of the deep are beautifully interesting in a 
creature looking so essentially quadruped. When 
the boat is afloat again the seals come trooping out 
of their caverns to reconnoitre. At about a depth 
of three feet they paddle about, gazing up through 
the clear liquid with an expression of countenance 
beaming with curiosity and intelligence. They dodge 
around the boat, occasionally ascending to the sur- 
face to renew their inspirations of air 3 and to look, 
upon their island-home, to ascertain whether they 
may return there and be at rest. A grown-up cub 
about Four feet long had been taken by the people ; 
one seal was observed more persevering in her watch- 
fulness and assiduity to regain the shore than the 
rest ; this was conjectured to be the dam of the 
slaughtered young one. The maternal instinct did 
not exhibit any stronger emotion than this anxious 
vigilance ; the young one was sufficiently grown to 
be no longer dependent on the mother. Had it 
been still sucking, there was enough to shew that 
the parental passion would have merged fearlessness 
into fury, and inquietude for the safety of its young 
into unsparing vengeance for its fate. 

Without doing more than referring to Weddell's 
observation that the jaw of the seal he describes was 



52 



so powerful in the agonies of death as to grind stones 
into powder, it seemed from the condition of the 
teeth of some eight that were taken during the visit 
of the party I have been referring to, that their 
strength is exercised in more laborious work than 
crushing the bones of fishes. The opinion the 
more experienced fishermen expressed, was that they 
fed as much on moluscous animals as on fish, and 
that their teeth suffered much wear and tear in the 
work of breaking shells. Yet it is remarkable that 
the contents of the stomach of those killed gave 
them no insight into the nature of their food ; they 
were invariably empty. 

I must not omit to mention, that the friends whose 
visit to the Pedros I here relate, had an opportunity 
of, closely observing the progression of the seal when 
ascending the beach. The advance was by a suc- 
cession of zig-zag movements. It was eviuent inai 
the ground was first gripped by one fore-flipper, 
then by the other, and that the body advanced first 
to the right then to the left, as one or the other 
flipper took its hold of the earth and helped the 
body onward. They seemed to delight in basking 
in the sun, and to huddle together and grunt out 
their pleasure in each others' company. 

"When Humboldt made his first passage across 
the bank of the Vibora, that in these Pedro Shoals, 
in the month of December 1800, he observed a 
number of curious meteorological phenomena, all 
portending the adverse weather which exposed him 
to danger and lengthened his passage to the Havan- 
na to some 14 days. He thus relates his observa- 



58 



tions : — On the night of the 2d December a curious 
optical phenomenon presented itself. The full moon 
was very high. At 45 minutes before its passage 
over the meridian, a great arch suddenly appeared? 
of prismatic colour, but gloomy. It was higher 
than the moon and of a breadth of nearly two degrees. 
It remained stationary for several minutes ; after 
which it gradually descended and sunk below the 
horizon. The sailors were filled with astonishment 
at the moving arch, which they supposed to an* 
nounce wind. Bonpland and several passengers saw 
besides, at the distance of a quarter of a mile, a 
small flame, which ran on the surface of the sea 
towards the south-west and illuminated the atrno- 
sphere. On the 4th and 6th they encountered rough 
weather, with heavy rain, accompanied by thunder 9 
and were in considerable peril on the bank. On 
the 19th they reached Havanna after a boisterous 
passage. 

The retinues with which the Indians sallied out; 
to the Islands, for their annual fish^feastings and 
barbecoes as they were called, may be conceived 
from that very picturesque account which Columbus 
gave of a cacique whose principality was Cabala, 
and the neighbouring isles, narrated by the cura de 
los palacios, On the 22d July 1494, the discovery 
ships stood across from Cuba, to complete the cir- 
cumnavigation of the island of Jamaica. On the 
Southern coast, the variable winds and evening- 
showers obliged them to anchor under the land for 
the night, and proceed in their course in the morning.. 



54 

Columbus, amidst the verdure that met his eye, 
was • particularly pleased with a great bay, con- 
taining seven islands, surrounded by numerous vil- 
lages. Anchoring here in the evening, he was visited 
by the cacique who resided in the largest and most 
elevated of the islands. He came with numerous 
retainers bearing refreshments, and ioiiered till night, 
listening enraptured at the stories of the splendour 
and glory of the land from which the strangers 
came. For the incidents which followed this visit, 
we shall draw at length from the charming text of 
Washington Irving in his narrative of the life and 
voyages of Columbus. "The next morning the 
ships were under way and standing along the coast 
with a light wind, and easy sail, when they beheld 
three canoes issuing from among the islands of the 
bay. They approached in regular order ; one which 
was very large, and handsomely carved and pointed 
was in the centre, a little in advance of the two 
others, which appeared to attend and guard it. In 
this was seated the cacique and his family, con- 
sisting of his wife, two daughters, two sons, and 
five brothers, One of the daughters was eighteen 
years of age, beautiful in form and countenance j her 
sister was somewhat younger ; both were naked, 
according to the custom of these islands, but were 
of modest demeanor. In the prow of the canoe 
stood the standard bearer of the cacique, clad in a 
mantle of variegated feathers, with a tuft of gay 
plumes on his head, and bearing in his hand a flut- 
tering white banner. 'Two Indians with caps or 



55 



helmets of feathers of uniform shape and colour, and 
their faces painted in a similar manner, beat; upon 
tabors : two others, with hats curiously wrought of 
green feathers, held trumpets of a fine black wood, 
ingeniously carved : there were six others, in large 
hats of white feathers, who appeared to be guards to 
the cacique. 

" Having arrived along-side of the Admiral's 
ship, the cacique entered on board with all his train. 
He appeared in full regalia. Around his head was 
a band of small stones of various colours, but prin- 
cipally green, symmetrically arranged, with large 
white stones at intervals, and connected in front by 
a large jewel of gold. Two plates of gold were 
suspended to his ears by rings of very. small green 
stones. To a necklace of white beads, of a kind 
deemed precious by them, was suspended a large 
plate, in the form of a fleur dc lys, of guanin, an 
inferior species of gold ; and a girdle of variegated 
stones, similar to those round his head, completed 
his regal decorations. Hi3 wife was adorned in a 
similar manner, having also a very small apron of 
cotton, and bands of the same round her arms and 
legs. The daughters were without ornaments, ex- 
cepting the eldest and handsomest, who had a girdle 
of small stones, from which was suspended a tablet, 
the size of an ivy leaf, composed of various-coloured 
stones, embroidered on a net work of cotton. 

" When the cacique entered on board the ship, 
he distributed presents of the productions cf his 
island among the officers and men, The admiral was 



56 



at this time in his cabin, engaged in his morning 
devotions. When he appeared on deck, the chief- 
tain hastened to meet him with an animated coun- 
tenance. " My friend," said he, ' I have determined 
to leave my country and to accompany thee. — I 
have heard from these Indians who are with thee, 
of the irresistable power of thy sovereigns, and of 
the many nations thou hast subdued in their name. 
Whoever refuses obedience to thee is sure to suffer. 
Thou hast destroyed the canoes and dwellings of the 
Carribs, slaying their warriors, and carrying into 
captivity their wives and children — all the islands 
are in dread of thee ; for who can withstand thee, 
now that thou knowest the secrets of the land, and 
the weakness of the people. Rather,' therefore, 
than thou shouldest take away my dominions, I will 
embark all my household in thy ships, and will go 
to do homage to thy king and queen, and to behold 
their country, of which thy Indians relate such won- 
ders ! — When this speech was explained to Colum- 
bus, and he beheld the wife, the sons and daughters 
of the cacique and thought upon the snares to which 
their ignorance and simplicity would be exposed, he 
was touched with compassion, an>3 determined not 
to take them from their native land. He replied to 
the cacique, therefore, that he received him under his 
protection as a vassal of his sovereigns, but having 
many lands yet to visit before he returned to his 
country, he would at some future time fulfil his desire 
Then taking leave with many expressions of amity, 
the cacique with his wife and daughter, and all his 



57 



retinue re-embarked in the canoes, returning reluct 
tantly to their island, and the ships continued on 
their course," (B. vii. ch. vi.) 

The island of Cabrita in Old Flar or Bay, on 
which this cacique dwelt as we are t i in a large 
village, is the Goat island of our maps. It was 
from here that the first seeds, of the Sea Island 
cotton were obtained for the plantations in Georgia. 
It is now without a hut or an inhabitant. The 
fisherman's canoe seldom visits it. It is the haunt 
of the bittren and the curlew. The crek of the 
mangrove hen may be heard as it traverses the 
marshes, but scarce any other voice. The goats 
that gave itffrs name of Cabrita, have been long ago 
exterminated. The manatee frequently found in 
the fresh-water swamps of the opposite coasts, oc- 
casionally swims to it to browze the shallows, 
covered with the green anu giossy bhclcS Cf tile 
Zostera, or sea grass. The rich argosies of Spain, 
laden with the ingots of the mines, rendez-voused 
here under the shelter of its heights in what is still 
called Galleon-harbour, but hardly any coasts of the 
island, presents less of life than the principality of 
this feathered chieftain. The seven islets have their 
respective bird tenantry still, and the shoals teem 
with fishes. Pelican key, possesses its peculiar 
nestlers, and pigeon island, is the resort of multi- 
tudinous flocks of the bald-pate dove, a pigeon that 
partakes so much of the rock-dove character as to 
flock to this remote island to build. They find 
there a sufficiency of arboreal foliage, and permit 
only an occasional white egret, to make a lodging 



58 



among them. It has happened that the cachelot 
whale has been seen tumbling and spouting in these 
waters. The numerous villages of the coast men- 
tioned by Columbus have disappeared, and this 
narrative of the Lord of the isles, with its decorated 
pageantry is the first and last picture we have of 
Indian life upon these shores. 



The garrison net at Port Royal is 150 yards long* 
The water is too deep for the seine any where nearer 
than the opposite shores of Green-bay and the 
Itealthshira inlet by the Great Salt Pond, and in 
the ponds and lagoons about. The artillery soldiers 
make* a boat's crew and haul it on those shoal 
grounds. In the several seasons it gives a prodigi • 
oiis diversity of fishes ; some of the most curious 
arc malthseas and torpedos — called here tremblers, 
from iremola the Mediterranean name for the tor- 
pedo. There are large supplies of mullets to be 
obtained by nets of this description from the Fort 
Augusta ponds. 

The gulls and terns ; and boobies and noddies ; 
are few at this time. They are engaged in the 
labours of the Nursery on the Pedro-keys. In July 
and August, after their broods are full-fledged, they 
come hither, and forming flocks of several hundred, 
feed daily in the Salina ponds at Passage Fort, 
retiring in similar flocks to roost in the mangroves 
outward at sun-down. 

The osprey, pandion haliaectus, fishes in the waters 
at the mouth of the Rio-Cobre, and hovers after 
the nets at Port-Henderson. 



59 



The pelicans are seen of an evening retiring to 

their roost in the outer islets in pairs. 

* * * ■* # * * * 

In every family of animals there is a prevailing 
character peculiar and definite, which is always 
predominant, whatever may be the differences of 
the several species which that family includes. 
Thus among birds, in the falconidas we perceive the 
essential trait to be the raptorial power of the talons, 
the special differences being an accommodation of 
the body to restricted habits and pursuits ; in the 
gallinacese, the rasorial quality of the foot and its 
adaptation for defence; in the ardeadas the javelin 
properties of the bill for spearing the fish ; and in 
the anatidas the sensitive power of the mandible 
formed in the shape of a spoon to enable the several 
individuals of the duck tribe, to examine and scoop 
up and search the waters for infusorite and other 
animalcules. The Pelicanulse considered in this 
way exhibit as a predominant character a structure 
in the greatest possible degree adapted for changing 
the specific gravity of the body so as to accommo- 
date it to sudden and instantaneous transitions from 
heaviness, when rapidly descending upon a prey, 
to extreme buoyancy when pursuing it, added to a 
facility of lessening its specfic gravity, when bur- 
thened with a load of provender. 

In the pelicans, the lower jaw affords suspension 
to a capacious pouch in which the bird bears away 
a considerable weight of fish, but the corresponding 
sack about the neck and throat of the tachypetes, 
or frigate bird is simply a large reservoir for air, to 



60 



increase the buoyancy of the body in flight, and 
to give direction to the beak upward and downward 
by lessening or increasing the gravity of the regions 
of the head. A prodigiously dilatable oesophagus 
to compensate the want of a pouch for collecting 
and storing food, occurs in the cormorant, phala- 
crocorax carbo, another very marked individual of 
the family of pelkans, and reputed among the most 
voracious of birds. The lower mandible is slender, 
elastic, and dilatable, and comparatively weak, but 
additional pairs of muscles,- having been furnished 
them, the structure of the bill combines increased 
facility for retaining their prey, with augmented 
powers for seizing _ it. The piotuses or darters, 
another very remarkable genus of this curious tribe 
of birds have an excessive length of neck to fit them 
for pursuits differing from those of the pelicans, 
and the frigate birds ; but the peculiar power of 
all is still the versatile gravitation of the body. 
The darter swims with the body surraerged, no 
other part being seen, but the long slender head and 
neck, which appear moving over the stream, like a 
serpent, breasting the waves, half erect. The frigate- 
bird's capacity is for the air alone ; it abandons 
the water altogether, and neither dives nor swims, 
but confines itself to the limitless expanse of the 
ocean from whence alone it derives its food. 

Of all sea birds, the frigate bird is one of the 
most remarkable. Its flight is not as distant from 
shore as that of the albatross, but it is equally of 
great duration, the bird having extraordinary length 
of wing in addition to the special organs for giving 



61 



buoyancy to the body. It does not like the albatross 
depend on its own unassisted exertions for food. It 
lives by rapine, and the prey which the gull and the 
sula seize, are yielded to the assaults o* ih^ frigate- 
bird to supply its wants and satiate its appetite. 
With all the means resulting from the best adapted 
form for flight found in the swallow tribe, on the 
gigantic scale of a bird of the largest dimensions, 
muscular power, lengthened wing, and a long and 
forked tail, it exhibits similar feebleness of feet. 
The same untiring flight and velocity of movement 
stamp both as dependent on the capture of prey, 
while that prey is moving through the air. Thus 
the frigate-bird darts upon the flying-fish, when, 
they betake themselves to the air to escape their 
pursuers in the water ; seizes the falling prey dis- 
gorged by the booby and the gull, when those birds 
are attacked and compelled to surrender it. 

Let us go more minutely into the structure of the 
frigate-bird, to illustrate the versatile power of 
buoyancy in the pelicanidas. 

The capacious sack constituting the peculiar 
throat-pouch of the tachypetes does not form one 
uninterrupted chamber, but is intersected by some 
three septa or divisions, and seems a prodigious ex- 
tension of the interclavicular or furcular air-cell. 

Air blown into the trachea by the blow-pipe in a 
bird dissected by the late Dr. Charaberlaine, in my 
presence, did not affect this pouch ; the communica- 
tion appeared to be in some way from the mouth by 
the cervical air-cells. The dissection of this part 
of the bird had proceeded too far, for any decision 



62 



as to whether the communication was immediately 
by the eustachian tube, for although when the blow- 
pipe was introduced into this tube there was a sen" 
alble stream of air felt where the cervical air-cells 
had been opened, the throat-pouch baring been like- 
wise laid open, its dependence on a supply of air by 
the eustachian tube could not be ascertained. 

While the numerous cells between the integuff 
of the body derived their air immediately from 
the lungs, the throat pouch was susceptible of in- 
flation totally independent of supplies from the tho- 
racic cavity, 

The air which had been blown into the lungs by 
the trachea had passed into the body generally, for 
when these parts were opened, they were fou. 
be highly inflated and the vessels and nerves inter- 
secting the transparent septa in their office oi form 
ir*g the cellular air-cavities, between the skin and 
the subjacent muscles, were beautifully exhibited in 
their passage, f<ora the interior to the exterior por- 
tions .of the body* 

I observed, in the living bird that as the throat 
psuch, which is bare of feathers, was at any time dis- 
tended with air, the skin increased in intensity of 
colour and changed from a dull dhty rouge, to a 
oeep brilliant red, deepening in hue, as the pouch 
swelled in volume. This no doubt resulted from the 
change which the blood underwent, in the capillary 
vessels of this great receptacle. The systemic g cir- 
culation in this part, was acted upon by the oxyge- 
nated air in the great cells of the throat, this air 
being derived immediately from the atmosphere. 



63 



Independent or that which producer] changes in the 
blood by the pulmonary circulation. 

The throat did not form an open receptacle, hang- 
ing as a continuation of tegtimentary covering of 
the under jaw like that in the pelican, but was a 
closed sack, having no perceptible communication 
with the mouth and was capable of being filled or 
discharged by a rapid collapse of the cells into which 
is was divided, This was doubtless effected by the 
large fm-shaped muscle that coders the inter-clav?- 
cular air cell, this pouch being, as I think, that cell 
prodigiously enlarged. 

When the cormorant has swallowed a fish too 
large for the gullet, it has the power of inflating the 
throat and by violently shaking the head and twist- 
ing the neck, to force it through the passage. In the 
gannet the capacious oesophagus is similarly capable 
of being extended by inflation. The pelican s-jper • 
adds to the capacious oesophagus of the gannet the 
faucial bag. He regulates the distribution of air 
through his system, that he may carry his heavy load. 
The whole cellular tissue, even to the tips of the 
wings and the end of the fleshy part of the legs, can 
be blown up from the tracheae. Air passes into the 
lower mandible immediately from the lungs by the 
cells passing along the neck and throat, and when 
he has swallowed any thing which he does not wish 
to retain, he has the power of blowing it out into 
his throat-sack, by a sudden blast, and, by shaking 
his head, to cast it from him. 

A pelican 1 had sent me some days ago, wounded 
in the wing and unable to fly, accommodated him- 



64 



self to his crippled life with great sagacity. It 
was not possible to procure for him fish very early 
in an inland place like Spanish Town. lie would 
vvaii with apparent patience up to what he consi< 
dered a reasonable hour, that is, till noon-day, when 
he would seek me by searching for me wherever I 
might be found. It might be in the drawing room i 
then taking such a stand as would ensure attention, 
he would open his jaws, adjusting the under one 
in a straight line downward. Stretching out the 
sack, he would then give me to understand, as plain 
as a pocket turned inside out could say, " I have not 
a stiver," that he had nothing there, and hungry as 
a hunter without the power of hunting, he was ready 
for any provender I had to give him. It was in- 
teresting to see the readiness with which he trans- 
ferred his instincts from the providence of nature 
to a secondary dependence on the providence of 
man. The bird I see tame on the beach at Port- 
Royal, exhibits extraordinary intelligence and doci- 
lity, and resorts to the same mode of showing his 
empty sack to let his master know that he is as flat 
as a flounder. 



I have a number of odds and ends of Fishermen's 
notes Which I must string together and make the 
most of. 

If a man takes to the sea for sport in Port royal, 
he is no half and half sportsman, he is " toties in 
qualibet parte." The night, or rather the turn of 
morning is the time for amusement, if one seeks for 
success as well as excitement. 



65 



The fi3iijng for king-fish is on the bank on tne 
outside of the Port Royal keys, where the maps set, 
down the Maiden Key, the Long Key, and South. 
Key. The cuter portion is called the edge. It is 
far out to windward ; so far away that you just bare*' 
\y discern the vegetation of the Palisades, when yon 
are anchored on the bank. The current strikes 
upon it with a broad swell The -fishing time fa 
over at day-break* It is accomplished with lines. 
wired for ten fathoms beyond the hook, When the 
fish has taken bail and is fastened, as he h lafge 
and powerful, one of the tuny alliances, ihc gtiaru* 
puca of Miirgrave, the cybium Solan dri of An* 
thors,— he must be dealt with cautiously. There 
Is a prodigious deal of unsatisfactory history m all 
these tasaards, as the cybiums are called jiy the- 
French. Nothing will be done conclusively till 
careful drawings are made of all our seomberoid 
fishes, I am disposed to give some of them an ex- 
cellent name ns table fishes. The king»fish is the 
most recommendable of them. Having hooked him, 
an instrument must be had recourse to, called the 
grabbet, It is a hook of large size, unbarbed. It 
is lashed on with wire to a staff, and placed under 
the fish when he is to be drawn up from the surface. 
He must be gathered in rushing from side to side as 
he plays on the water. The point is suddenly stricken 
into the body, and he is then jerked into the boat, 
and stunned by a blow from a block of wood they 
call the mutlar, The word is no doubt Spanish, and 
ghould mean the ** killer." 



66 



The bonito u another of the tunny alliances. I 
do not know whether it is determined that this is 
the thynnus pelamys, or coretta. It is fished for on 
Fort shoal, just outside the point of Port Royal. — 
The shoal has from five to seven fathoms of water. 
The line used, is small and light, It isnecessnry 
that it should float, for the bonitos will only take 
bait at the surface. To induce them to rise, a hand- 
ful of the trapong fry, is thrown into the water 
and on the bonito rising to this decoy, the baited 
hook with the gathered coil of line,, which had all 
this while been held in the hand of the fisher, is 
suddenly thrown out among the fry, and the fish 
snaps it and is caught. He is a large and powerful 
nsh, and requires to be helped in with the grabbet. 
The bonito's visit to this bank is from August to 
April. In April they become scarce. 

The great fishing place for sharks, is the bonito 
bankj off the Powder Magazine. At particular sea- 
eons the sharks abound there. These seasons are 
those of the sexual passion, and of foetal maturation, 
when the viviparous shark like the viviparous viper 
must seek a bank to sun itself upon, that it may 
acquire a higher degree of heat than belongs to a cold- 
blooded animal. The sharks commence congregating 
on this bank in December, There is another shoal, 
called the Mammee shoal, off Fort Augusta* that is 
a common gathering place for sharks in the season. 
Frequently as the shark is met with in the fathom- 
less ocean, empty and hungry, ready to devour any 
thing that comes in his way, he is not a surface, but 



67 



a ground feeder. All the cartilaginous fishes are 
ground feeders. The flattened head, the transversal 
mouth, forming when open, a circumference, equal 
to one third the length of the fish as in the plagios- 
tome division, or the truncated head and the suc- 
torial mouth, without teeth, as in the cyclostomes* 
fit them only for taking their prey from banks, and 
shallows. Besides this, they all want the swimming 
bladder, so that they fall to the bottom of the water 
as soon as they cease to move in it. There is 
not so much mystery in the vast schools of sharks 
that are sometimes seen in places, as naturalists 
suppose. They congregate on the shoals for breeding. 
The saunterer on the shingled beach, however in- 
different he may be to seaweeds, and such common 
products of the surf, scarce fails to be attracted by 
the semi-transparent, rolled-up sheets of somethings 
having neither the appearance of horn nor parch* 
ment, though resembling both, which he hears called 
mermaids' purses. He takes it in his hand, or per- 
haps turns it over with his foot. He is puzzled by 
its strange box-like character, with convoluted ten- 
drils at the corners. They are tangled with the 
seaweed. They were placed among the vegetation of 
the shore, to be fastened by those corner strings that 
they might not wash away into deep water. They 
are the egg-cases of cartilaginous fishes, deposited 
there to be hatched in the warm and sunny shallows. 
Anybody who has sent down the leaded line, armed 
with fish-hooks, when crossing the banks of New- 
foundland, knows that he is just as likely to bring 



68 



op the <lo2-fi*h, the scyllium, or the muDtelus, as the 
cod-fish or the holibut ; and everybody who has 
stood upon our beaches, and seen the contents of 
the seine turned out from the shoaling bank, or the 
shallow shore, will call to mind the number of young 
of the raiadse and the squalidae, he has seen among 
the gathered hosts of the meshes. All these are so 
many evidences of the ground feeding life of the 
cartilaginous fishes. He will not be surprised to find 
therefore that the shark has its bank as a gathering 
place, as well as the usual market fishes. The two 
spots particularly pointed out as shark-feeding 
grounds at Fort Royal are the Fort shoal, off the 
Magazine point, and the Mamraee bank off Fort- 
Augusta. In particular seasons they are surprisingly 
numerous at both these places, 

In r hole, as it is called^ that is, a deep portion of 
the waters off Fort Augusta, is the fishing place for 
cutlass fish, trichiurus. The fishing is before day* 
The lines are pulled in as fast as they are thrown 
oof, with the certainty that a cutlass has been hook*? 
ed. As many as ninety odd boats have been count- 
ed on this fishing ground at day -break in the season, 
all carrying on this kind of uninterrupted hauling 
in of fish. The cutlass is n scomberoid fish, as flat 
as a sword -blade, and is delicious fried. 

The shrimps, called grass shrimps, so necessary 
for bait, are caught on the shoals bordering the Pa* 
Hisades inside the harbour. The net used, seems to 
be what the French call the haveneau. It is folded 
fcetween two poles and carried up by the fisherman 



6S 



wading. When he comes athwp.rt a body of shrimp^ 
scrambling through the water, he scoops with his 
net sufficiently deep to pass under them and so gets 
a shoal of them, which he transfers to a bag at his 
back or slung at his side. 

The shrimps and prawns for the table usually 
seen in the Kingston market, are obtained from the 
shallows about Hunt's- bay. 

The trapong leaps from the water as soon as it is 
booked. If the line is held taught, he will succeed 
by his leaping manoeuvres* in disengaging himself 
from the hook* 

The anchovy engraulis (E. endetulus of Cuv, and 
Val.) abounds on the Palisade shallows. They area 
most exquisite fry, cooked strung together on a 
palm straw through the eye, by half dozens, and 
served up as they serre white -bait. 

King fish are only occasionally taken within the 
harbour. The king-fish mackerel that is the cybium 
regale, is taken at the head of the harbour by being 
gently towed for with a line. 

The June*fisb, plectropomoe - , - - *, are frequently 
harpooned at the dock yard six feet long. 

The mugil curema is taken about Port Royal and 
when large passed off in the market as callipeva, 
mugil liza.* 



Having returned from a visit to the naval hospital, 
I call to mind an occurrence witnessed when I visited 



* I am indebted to Mr Robert Salmon of Port Royal 
for the information contained in these notes on fishing. 



70 



it some fourteen years ftgone, from which I draw 
inferences that I would turn to account in a memo • 
randum. 

A young officer was in one of the centre wards 
convalescent from a fever. The pearly suffusion of 
returning health was lighting up his countenance, 
pale and sunken as it was. His disorder had ren- 
dered it necessary that his head should he shaved, 
and ho sat propped in l,h ch«ir in night-gown and 
night-cap, in the mid t of that fresh airy enjoyment 
of the set breeze, so especially a circumstance of the 
Port Royal hospital, and in which it has an advan- 
tage unequalled in any hospital beside that I have 
visited. By the invalid on his table sat a small 
sapajou monkey, with all the solemn interest of a 
friend in the concerns of the sick : he attended on 
the officer, smoothed the.wrinkles of his tablecloth, 
and waited for his spoon and basin. An interest 
seemed mingled in all the emotions of the master, 
with amusement in the officiousness of this kind and 
quality of a servant. Ho invited us to accept the 
caresses of his attendant monkey, assuring us he was 
gentle and we need not feel alarm at his familiarity. 
Now it seemed to me thnt this kind of attraction 
of the sick-mi?,:] from the morbid sensations of ion;; 
liness and the regretful recollections of separation 
from home and friends, was an important aid to 
health. The attention was fixed on things, neither 
eye- sore, nor heart-sickening ; and it strikes me that 
among such men as sailors, by whom shore allure* 
ir.eBtfl, are eagerly seized and intensely enjoyed, living 
objects suggesting the interest of natural history 



71 



might be rendered great auxiliaries of the hospital 
nurses and doctors* Poor good Sarah Adams was 
then there, moving through the wards in an atmo- 
sphere of endearment and regard for the motherly 
sympathies she united with her duties. Where there 
was grief there the habit of kindness in her, was 
ready to pour out consolation, and while it alleviated 
bodily affliction, to reconcile the heart with words 
of soothing, to suffering and sorrow as processes of 
purification to the soul. I would not say this, which 
might pass for mere sentimental talk, if this remark- 
able negress, were not still spoken of with absolute 
fondness by those who had experienced her worth as 
a nurse. With a creature like the sailor, who, with 
whatever of evil he may have, mingled with his 
nature, is distinguished for his generous virtues, the 
impulses that make him the hero amid the ardour of 
patriotism, are the burning zeal and devotion lighted 
at the hearth-fires of home, " The household fire 
and the altar," says the author of Lectures on the 
Philosophy of the Human Mind (Dr. Thos. Brown, 
Ixxxix.) " which are coupled together in the exhor- 
tations of the leaders of armies, and in the hearts of 
those whom they address, have a relation more inti- 
mate than that of which they think, who combat for 
both. It is before the household fire that everything 
which is holy and worthy of the altar is formed. 
There arose the virtues that were the virtues of the 
child, before they were the virtues of the warrior or 
the statesman ; and the mother who weeps with de- 
light at the glory of her son, when a whole nation is 
exulting with her. rejoices over the same heroic forii- 



72 



stud®, that at a period almost as delightful to her, in 
the little sacrifices which boyish generosity could 
make, had already often gladdened her heart, when 
she thought only of the gentle virtues before her, 
and was not aware of half the worth of that noble 
offering which she was speedily to make to her coun- 
try and to the world." 

Now a sailor, of all men sick and ashore, most 
feels that he is not at home, for almost always when 
on shore he is there. Whatever draws forth the 
confidence of affection among strangers, only im- 
presses him the more with the consciousness that 
■" he is not in his father's house," and brings upon 
him stronger yearnings for his early home. Port 
Royal, of all places, has the most desolate dreariness. 
You are on the land, but not of the land. You see 
the mountains but you are severed from them. You 
gaze upon the green uplands, but the link between 
you and them is a long sandy desert. I do not 
know what one of the medical officers at the hospital 
it was, but it was one, who drew the attention of 
government to the vast importance in a sanitary 
point of view to the sailor when sick and thoughtful 
on the probabilities of death, if he should be per- 
mitted to contemplate some more congenial resting- 
place than the burning sands of the beach. If he 
could see some shadow of a rock in that weary 
land, he might be reconcile*! to lie under it for rest 
and repose ; but it was a tedious waste, unrefreshed 
by a single mass above its herbless sand-heaps of 
graves. The dreariness of such a prospect was a 
sad obstacle to that refreshment of the mind so 



necessary to quicken the emotions of returning 
hope. It was easier to extinguish a fever than to 
mitigate despondency. The hospital officer suggested 
to the Admiralty that they should clear out from 
over-running wood, and bush and brier, the ancient 
burial ground at Greenwich, on the opposite side of 
the harbour ; representing the place as full of vaults 
and monumental memorials of the old seamen of the 
station, and that when opened out and set in order, 
with its heavy timbered trees and flowering shrubs, 
it would have the fairness and freshness of a garden. 
When Greenwich was an appendage of the Dock- 
yard, it was the free space for pastime and recreation 
with the Port Royal sailor, and, in the property 
yet existing in the burial ground, it might be made 
a strolling place for the sailor still. Sir Charles 
Adams told me he was commissioned to look at it 
and report upon it. I directed him to it and he 
visited it. It is there the victim of the memorable 
duel, Stackpole, lies buried, his antagonist Cecil, 
who survived him but a few day3, finding a grave 
in the little corner garden that fills the cruciform 
spaces of Port Royal Church within the town. — 
I went and examined the Greenwich burial ground 
some years ago. There are several well-built- 
vaults there. That erected by the Curtin and 
Dowdale family, stands about six feet high on a 
base of about nine or ten feet square. Two large 
marble slabs cover the top, recording the interment 
of many members of the family. The last recorded 
is 1752. Major Michael Brandreth of the Hon'ble 
Colonel Kay's Regiment has a large tomb. His 

G 



74 



burial is of 1730. The slab is headed with the 
family arms. The crest, a lamb couchant. I 
noticed a head stone to the Halls of St. Andrew's, 
an inscription on a plate of copper of some naval 
personage, and a tomb cf some official of the Dock* 
yard. There are numerous other memorials of the 
dead, but the place is so overgrown with wood, as 
well underwood as forest trees, that one makes his 
search of curiosity with a feeling conviction that if 
these tenants of the grave yard did not live contend- 
ing with the thorns and thistles that the earth was to 
bring'forth to every child of Adam, since the doom 
" dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return," 
overtook them, they have not escaped the curse. 
■ — This burial ground is up, about a couple of bow- 
shots from the beach, "high and dry," commanding 
a pleasant view of the busy waters of the harbour, 
and of the mingled plains and mountains around. — 
No other burial ground in the district has the same 
aspect of a quiet resting-place, in the midst of a 
stirring world on sea and land, and so broadly 
and unobstructed!} 7 within sight of the great and 
terrible doings of human passion, the batteries on 
the shore fierce and tranquil, like sleeping watch- 
dogs ■; and the moving castles " whose march is on 
the mountain wave." It is a very appropriate berth 
for a dead sailor. I wish the government would re- 
claim it literally, as well in the legal as the agricul- 
tural sense. On the beach are the remains of a brick- 
built landing place. It is not so much cost of money 
as of time and labour that is required to set this house 
of the dead in order. It seems to have been established 






in consequence of the earthquake driving so many 
into the Liguanea plain for a habitation. Green- 
bay was an additional grave-yard. There Louis 
Gaidy lies buried, dead forty seven years after he had 
been buried alive in the earthquake, and disinterred 
again. But it is time to return to the Hospital. 

So far then with reference to the prospect oi 
death, but let us give some consideration to what 
may be made a salutary help, when that inequality 
in the condition of the body is overcome, which was 
disorder, and disease,-— and health returns, and life 
regains its normal power, in becoming li the sum of 
the actions of an organised being ;" when its tendeia- 
cy to replace what was lost and repair what was de- 
ranged, results in the ordinary operations of its ori« 
ginal constitution. We know what the cheerful 
conversation of friends can do to keep the machinery 
of life steadily working when it has regained its 
balance. TVe know how the pleasant scenes of na- 
ture can force upon us in spite of our indifference, 
interest in the beauty of surrounding objects, and 
wonder and admiration at the instinctive intelligence 
which makes what is necessary to life and enjoyment 
subservient to both. When I had entered up thus 
much of my note3, I bethought me, I would turn to 
Thomson's little convenient work on domestic medi- 
cine, and household surgery to ascertain the notice 
which he has bestowed upon the mind, as one of the 
agencies of health. I found the influence it exercis- 
ed over the sanitary condition, expressed as making 
the tone of it, a weighty consideration in the ulti- 
mate issue of disease, and illustrating it by a refer* 



'6 



ence to " faith, home sickness, hope, fear," &e. ag 
emotions to be attended to. I shall say nothing 
of hope or fear, the one a3 the exhilarating, the other 
as the depressing agent ; and I shall make no refer- 
ence to the faith of the doctor- book, which is not the 
faith that assents to the truth of what God has re- 
vealed, or puts the heart and the soul's dependence 
on trust in these truths for Salvation ; that book 
makes it the " confidence in what medicine may do 
for recovery ;" but the " home-sickness," the nostal- 
gia, the emotion excited by things that recall to 
mind, whatever the heart has loved, making it the 
desire of the senses, and the craving of the soul ; 
a vehement anxiety that must be controlled, or not 
alone melancholy will ensue, but disease will super- 
vene. This is the subject on which I would dwell 
for a moment.* 



* In the year '53 we were terribly smitten by yellows 
fever; the visitation was confined to newly-arrived Eu- 
ropeans, and to vessels lying along shore. Out away in 
the harbour the crews were comparatively, if not abso- 
lutely safe. I was very much interested in a case related 
to me by a medical friend. A sailor youth some 14 or 15 
years of age was mortally stricken with the pest. Me 
was throwing up that black grumous matter, that, told 
the blood had lost its vitality and death was circulating 
through all the system. " May I take anything I have a 
liking for," was the inquiry of the poor dying boy. It 
had come to this, that where nothing could do good, 
nothing could do harm. Assured that he might ; he 
asked for a drink of milk. As it was given to him, and 
he drank it, " ah," said foe, " this reminds me of my home, 



77 



It is the sick of the naval hospital we have to 
deal with. There are other wonders in the deer 
beside whales and walruses, —mermaids and sea • 
serpents. Familiar as the sailor is with his elements' 
the vegeto animal life of the ocean is an unopened 
book of marvels to him. Now what I would sug- 
gest as an amusement for the valetudinarian in this 
important institution, not alone to engross the mind 
pleasurably, and withdraw it from the morbid sen- 
sations of ill-health, but to keep it from brooding 
over friends and family far away, is an aquarium, or 
tank of rough rock work, groitoed at the ends, and so 
large that the eye. might survey the objects within 
the water at a long angle, and see them fully and 
fairly. I would have it garnished with poriferous 
and polypiferous animals, actinias, corals, mollusc^, 
and echino dermata, Crustacea, and fishes, with ijdi 
possible collections of sea weeds, algse, and other 

and of my poor mother, I have never had milk from any 
one since I left her. I used daily to receivejt from' her 
hands." Then burying the recollection of his home in 
agony in his bosom, and remembering he was sick among 
strangers and without a mother's care, or a sister's corn- 
fort to scothe him, the emotion was too great for his en- 
feebled heart — he rolled himself upon his pillow and diecL 
" I have heard a voice that cries aloud — 
Home, home, Comnenus! -- 



Where hath he a home ? 



His home is with the dead !" 

Isaac Comnemts, a Play, A. in. S. in 
by Henry Taylor, 



78 



vegetable treasures of the deep. It would be supplied 
with fresh sea-water daily, and ensure success with- 
out dependence on the adjustment of those relations 
between tha animal and the vegetable kingdoms by 
which the vital functions of both are permanently 
maintained, in places where sea-water cannot be 
had. These things have become quite systeraatised 
in marine establishments now. It is one of the 
pleasant pastimes of those who seek recreation and 
health by the sea-side, and who possess so much of 
a love of nature, as to notice these objects, to collect 
them in cquariums, and grouping them as we would 
do n posy of flowers, to watch their expansion into 
full bloom. It is not all animal flowers that are 
susceptible of being detached, but those that are, 
will repny the trouble and the watchfulness necessa- 
ry to obtain this gratification. To gaze on them 
clustering the rocks, and spreading their brilliant 
tints in the sunshine, mingling purple and pink, 
blue and yellow, with fringes of green, varied with 
erenated and runcinated edges, like so many assem- 
bled plants in blowth, and yet vanishing into mere 
masses like colourless funguses, when an attempt is 
made to touch them surprises as well as amuses. 
These are objects by their unusual or more properly 
speaking uncommon character, when we refer them 
to terrestrial experience, that give a stimulus of 
pleasure unequalled by anything else to valetudina- 
rian feelings, when the once-more-breathed air, and 
the refreshing earth and the sky inspire sensations of 



79 



intense delight. All the living objects of an aqua- 
rium would excite interest, but the animal sea- 
flowers would engross the raind with wonder. Out- 
wardly to nature and inwardly to ourselves our 
thoughts are or ought to be ever with Him li whose 
righteousness is like the great mountains, and whose 
judgments are a great deep ;" but in the preservation 
of man and beast, the " fountain of life in whose light 
we see light," gives wonderful expansion to the out- 
pourings of the mind, when wo turn to objects that 
hold such an ambiguous relation among living or-* 
ganisms that we feel ourselves equally right whether 
we speak of them as plants or animals. Notwith- 
standing the designation of sea-weeds given to horny 
articulations, ramified into arborescent forms, im- 
moveable on rocky bases, those branches and stems 
are animal products denuded of their cortical poiy- 
piarise. Whether the caliciferous corallines of La* 
mouroux should he absolutely ranked with plants, 
so equivocal is their character, so uncertain, they are 
not considered to be rightly placed with corticiferous 
polyps. The actiniae, the most showy of the animal 
sea-flowers, (expressly excluded from the class of 
polypi, though closely related to them,) are placed 
with them by Dr. Johnson, as radiated zoophytse. 
Sponges are described by physiologists as dubiously 
admissible into the animal series, and the jointed 
3ncl disjointed algae, enumerated as true sea- weeds, 
are of habits so paradoxical that naturalists are far 
from agreed whether they are not minute animals. 



80 



living in society and dispersing when the necessity 
of multiplying their race obliges them to do so. All 
are agreed that these beings exist at a point in 
the organic kingdom of nature in which there is the 
greatest difficulty in seizing facts which could at 
once determine their position in the animal or vege- 
table scale. Definitions so easily employed higher 
up the scale are of no use here. Examining the 
zoocarpes we might say we saw "a provisional cre- 
ation waiting to be organized and then, according 
to the corpuscles which penetrate it or develope 
among it, becoming the origin of two very distinct 
existences, the one animal, and the other purely ve- 
getable." (See algae : pseudozoaria : zoocarpes, gloio- 
eladeae:) These are the kind of attractions with 
which I would embellish the convalescents' aqua- 
rium. 

The flight of the several birds that usually course 
about the Port Royal waters, is Sufficiently distinc- 
tive. They can each be recognised at a distance. — 
The sailing of the gull-tribe ; the flight of the ster- 
ninae, the ferns and hydrochelidons ; the larinas ( 
xemas, and the gull proper or larus, is always well 
represented in marine pictures. They scud like 
vessels in a stiff breeze, cutting the wind in a slant, 
just as a skiff does sailing close hauled. The Os- 
prey glides and hovers : the herons flap leisurely 
their pinions, curving their necks upon their breast 
and putting their frame in the least possible space. 
The pelican flies heavily as if he was always bur* 
thened with a load. The ducks winnow the air 



laboriously, and the rails flutter for short distances 
only. None of the sea-birds clash their wings like 
the doves. The most self-commanding in its move- 
ments is the frigate-bird ; he does not seem to stir a 
feather, but motionless to float through the air."-— 
Whether he is high or low, he never changes the 
character of his movement, except to dash down- 
ward or upwards, to attack a gorged gull or a 
booby. 

The vulture seen at ail times, frequently courses 
along the beach to pick up the putrid refuse of the 
nets, and surpasses all birds in the character and 
quality of his flight. Without being more varied 
than that of the birds previously enumerated he has 
more of port or dignified bearing. Some live or six 
together will sail through the air as if they were 
wheeling through the mazes of a cotillion. The 
following description by Washington Irving is the 
most precisely graphic picture I know of its action 
in flying: "The turkey buzzard (vuitur aura,) 
when on the wing, is one of the most specious and 
imposing of birds. Its flight in the upper regions of 
the air, is really sublime, extending its immense 
wings, and wheeling slowly and majestically to and 
fro, seemingly without exerting a muscle or. flutter- 
ing a feather, but moving by mere volition, and sail- 
ing on the bosom of the air, as a ship upon the 
ocean. Usurping the empyreal realm of the e; . 
he assumes for a time the port and dignity of that 
majestic bird, and often is mistaken for him by igno- 
rant crawlers upon earth, ft is only when he 
descends from the clouds to pounce upon carrion 



m 



that he betrays his low propensities,- and reveals his 

caitiff character." The frigate-pelican is the only 

one of the sea birds that at all rivals him in his 

majesty of movement, but his narrow angular wings 

do not impress an observer with the same sense of 

stateliness as the full capacious van of the vulture. 
* * ***** 

On Bare-bush key, a low island with no vegeta- 
tion above the height of the merest scrub, the crab- 
catchers, and little bittern^ the ardeola exilis lay and 
hatch, and bring out their brood : but the great nur^ 
sery for the herons is the salt-pond ; in the man- 
groves that impenetrably line it on the sea-ward 
side, their nests are numerous, The blue gaulin, 
egretta cerulea, the egretta ruficollis, and other dark 
pluasaged egrets, with the nycticorax make nests of 
slight wicker-work among the mangrove foliage, but 
the pretty green bittern, which we call the crab- 
catcher, the herodias virescens, and the diminutive 
ardeola exilis construct more elaborate nests, a cup 
of herbs and fibres bedded in a centre of interwoven 
sticks and slight twigs. The eggs of all the heron- 
tribe are of the colour they eall aqua-marine, a 
mingled blue and green tint ; the eggs of the several 
genera and species differing only in rotundity or 
elongation % or in the greater or less depth of the 
eea-green hue. All the pelicanidaj, the pelican pro 
per, the booby and the frigate bird lay white eggs 5 
and the sternsnas, and laridaa blotched and spotted 
eggs. The pelicanidas make their nests on the rocks. 

Isidore Bourden a French physiologist has well 



- 



remarked that the question of difference between 
animals and plants is not a question about what are 
the characters peculiar to either, but what are com- 
mon to both. The elements of the structure of both 
are the same : they both commence in the simple 
primary cell, and an aggregation of these cells, forms 
the tissues, and makes up the completed organs. — 
We know very well that animals have nerves and 
muscles : that they possess in the higher grades, 
brain, and a heart, and lungs : and that they are 
furnished with a stomach and organs of support : 
that so constituted they move, digest, respire ; that 
they have blood ; and that they are endowed with 
more than irritability, a power which is unquestion- 
ably sensation. But what remains of all these cha- 
racters when we descend the long chain formed by 
sensitive beings and examine them from the first, 
link to the last? Lungs, glands, brain, skeleton, 
heart, arteries, blood, nerves, and muscles, succe3« 
siveiy disappear, till at last when we look for the 
mechanism of the internal cavity for the absorption 
of food, which we ccmsider the indispensable cha- 
racteristic of an animal, we are not sure whether 
even a stomach is left. 

We see ordinarily that animals are endued with 
sensation, and with perception. That they possess 
the faculty of transporting themselves from place to 
place ; that they live upon organic substances which 
their powers of motion and their ability of perceiv- 
ing, and discriminating, enable them to select ; that 
their food passes through an alimentary cavity from 
which its nutritive properties are transfused by 



8 



means of absorbent vessels into the system. Then 
we see that plants, on the contrary, are destitute of 
all traces of a nervous system, and consequently of 
perception as well as sensation ; that they are fixed 
to a particular spot whence nothing but mechanical 
power can remove them ; that they have no proper- 
ty, which we call motion, but that which they derive 
from internal, vital, and mechanical agency ; that 
they subsist upon the inorganic, matter that sur- 
rounds them, the earths, gases, and fluids ; and that 
their food is at once introduced into their system by 
absorption through their external surfaces only ; by 
the action of the leaves on the air, and the roots on 
the earths, and the fluids imbibed in the shape of 
rain, and dew taken in through all their surfaces — 
We hence see that among the. distinctions between 
the animal and vegetable kingdoms, that which is of 
first consideration is the different means possessed 
by sensitive and insensitive beings, animals, and 
plants, of procuring food and imbibing nourish- 
ment. 

Animals giftecl with power of movement, with 
feeling, and perception, distinguish and select what 
is proper for their sustenance. Furnished with 
organs of ranstication, they reduce to minute pieces 
the substances on which they feed, and having ab- 
sorbed as much of them as may be requisite for 
sustentation they reject the rest through channels 
provided for the purpose. Plants rooted to the same 
spot, have no power to go in search of aliment ; 
their juices flow through their ceils and tubes, with 
a regulated motion, and assimilation and reproduce 



85 



lion indicate their growth and powers of continu- 
ance : they have no capability of distinguishing be- 
tween the hurtful and the wholesome ; and if un- 
provided with a supply of materials for imbibition 
and absorption, they must perish. As nothing but 
matter so delicate as to pass through perforations, 
which the human senses, aided by the most power- 
ful microscopes cannot distinguish, is fitted for the 
support of plant3 ; and no inorganic matter, but 
water or air, or substances held in solution by the 
two fluids the aeriform and the aqueous can answer 
this description, air and water become the essential 
elements for the support of vegetable life. 

When we advance from the living bodies which 
we recognise as absolutely vegetable, to those which 
we perceive to be absolutely animal, by the interme« 
diate links that unite both, we find a difficulty in 
applying the distinctions we have just insisted upon 
to the higher endowments in the lower ranges of 
organic life, and to the lower endowments in the 
higher. We find that the character we have as- 
signed, will not apply with exactness to either the 
3nimal or the vegetable kingdom. Let us take up 
the genera Diatoma or Fragillaria, and set these by 
the side of some tribe of aggregated Ascidians such 
for instance as the Bolryllus. The individuals of 
this tribe which at a certain period of their existence 
unite to form one common mass or system, float se- 
parate and free at first ; and the disjointed algae, 
diatoma and fragillaria, living in society and dis- 
persing to multiply, shake our confidence in sponta- 
neous motion from place to place as a test of animal 
n 



86 



vegetable nature. The transparent joints of the 
zygnema are filled with a green reproductive matter 
composed of brilliant spovules arranged with beauti- 
ful symmetry in spires, but when they become sepa- 
rated, or in the scientific phrase disarticulated, their 
separate parts have distinct powers of voluntary 
motion : they unite and disunite, and finally com- 
bine into a simple and uniform being. We find 
properties hare which would justify us in viewing 
them as a link between the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, and endowed with the character of both. 
We take another example and ask in which kingdom 
are we to station the curious poly physa, a most decid- 
ed polyp according to one set of naturalist?, among 
whom we name De Blainville ; an equally' certain 
plant, if we are to trust another set, among whom 
occur the names of Agardh, and Guudichaud, the 
last of whom found it and described it. " It grows 
in thick tufts to the shells which are thrown ashore 
upon the barren coasts of New Holland. Each 
individual consists of a fistula, capillary, greenish 
stalk about an inch or an inch and a half long, ex-' 
pending at the base into a sort of root-like claw, by 
which it is fixed. At the end, it bears from fifteen 
to eighteen sacs, which are entire, rounded at the 
end, and slightly attenuated at the base ; each 
contains a multitude of little round green globules, 
which finally expand and break through the thin 
case in which they are included. They are filled 
with a green unctuous mntler, ana the colour of the 
parent body is entirely due to their presence, for 
when they have all escaped from their sacs, the 
far body is perfectly colourless." 



87 



From the earliest times in which we find re- 
searches into the systems of nature, we discover dif- 
ficulties in tracing the separation subsisting between 
;he animal and vegetable kingdoms : obscurity enve- 
lopes the subject, We find irritability in the vegeta- 
ble, and we seek and find something like the faculty 
of self-government : we see sensibility in the lowest 
grade of animal life, but in tracing its functions, 
iind them so equivocally manifested that the subsist- 
ing sensibility, amounts almost to an unrecognizable 
condition of the will. The mode by which syste» 
matists sought to 'meet a difficulty which patient ob- 
servation had failed to unravel, has been by consti- 
tuting an intermediate order of life, so vaguely cha- 
racterized to embrace the doubtful conterminous 
tribes of animals and plants. To these they have ap- 
plied the terms of phytozoa and zoophyta, plant ani- 
mals and animal plants, as the one or other nature 
seemed most predominant to shew their approxima- 
tion to vegetables or animals ; while the designation 
of liikophyta, ceratophyta and calciphyta, in expressing 
the horny or cretaceous nature of the animal or 
vegetable structure suggested, also their analogy to 
mineral aggregations. In the term pseudozoaiua 
proposed by De Blainville, to include ail the equivo- 
cal living forms, in which it becomes absolutely 
a matter of indifference, whether we make them 
animals or vegetables, since they fall within the 
definitions employed to characterize both, we have 
groups of the corallines and cor.fervae at one extre- 
mity containing fibrous and cretaceous bodies, curi- 
ously articulated, and branching into radiated tufts, 



88 



and at another, series of ramifications ending in' soft 
buds or filamentous gelatinous bodies, plant-like 
agglomerations of animals originally free and indi- 
vidualized, but finally associated by junction.— 
When we advance a step further, we ascend to 
those gradations of animal life, which assume the 
form of plants distributing their extravascular co- 
verings into brandies with tufts of animal flower?, 
and in this way becoming associated and united one 
with another. This next series of life is the pohj- 
piaria. 

The active animals of the poiypiaria of Blainviiie 
are generally of slender figure, provided with threid 
shaped tentacular, or cilice, some are provided with 
horny ooerculums for closing their cells ; others are 
spread out into convoluted expansions, or are dilated 
anto leaves, or are articulated and arranged in a net- 
work of chuins. 

Of those which especially command attention for 
their flower-like beauty, we may cursorily notice the 
campanularia, the sertularia, and the plumatella. — 
The ciliated circles rising out of cup-like cells from 
a twisted axis, and the plume shaped tentacula at- 
tached by radical fibres on a horny stem, and fasci- 
culi or bunches of tentacular fringes, retractile and 
closing up, like sleepy blossoms at sundown, are 
some of the most remarkable as well as beautiful of 
ihese animalized masses in the form of plants. 

It has been remarked that " as in a tree the 
flowering and reproductive organs manifest more ac- 
tive and varied functions than the general mass of 
bark and wood which serves to unite them in one 



89 



common life, so in these zoophytes the little polypi, 
expanding from their cells for food, light, or aeration, 
and shrinking back upon the agitation of the water, 
or withdrawal of the light, aie so many animal- 
flowers which may be studied apart from the poly- 
piaria or permanent branches which they adorned." 
(v. : Penny Cyclopsedia, commenting on Trembley's 
Descriptions: Art: Polypi.) Without organs of 
sense, or provision for mutual ofBces, they are asso* 
ciated into compound beings, and multiply by the 
process understood as gemmiparous, by the separa* 
tion of buds like a tree. 

The actinia, not so associated though closely alii* 
ed to the polypes, making near approach to the high* 
er group of tunicate mollusca, will arrest notice for 
a moment or two. These animal sea-flowers, more 
particularly bearing the names of anemones, mesem- 
bryanthemums, pinks, auriculas, daisies, sun-flowers* 
and marigolds, are cylindrical bodies, fleshy and soft, 
susceptible of contraction and dilatation. As their 
tentacula can be folded down into the centre aper* 
tare, and concealed under the outer envelope, when 
they are extended they have the appearance of 
opened blossoms, their floral character being increas- 
ed by the lively colours, with which they are emhel- 
iished. On the shores of temperate seas, in waters 
sustaining the varying warmth and eold of summer 
and winter, they exhibit the remarkable instinctive 
power of creeping up to the superficial ocean in sum- 
mer, and of descending to the profounder waters in 
winter. To effect these changes of place, they have 



90 



the power of turning themselves insido out, anil of 
making use of their tentacuia as feet with which 
they creep along the ground, and on finding a con* 
Yemeni place, of attaching themselves there firmly. 
(Hee zoantharia.) 



There area number of beautiful children running 
about the garrison grounds at Port Royal. They 
look the picture of health and lustiness. They do 
not suggest to the eye, the enervating influence of 
an Indian climate. They amuse themselves ifl the 
evening, filling bottles with the small shells they 
find on the bench. Port Royal does not however 
present more than two shells worth looking after, the 
pearly turbo pica, that they sometimes clean and sell 
inthestreets,and the spirula a chambered cephalapod, 
never found perfect. The fragmentary spirulse on the 
beach are worth looking at attentively, for the long 
discussion which De Blninville has excited on the 
structure of the animal, in his Malacozdirei. The 
cephalic mass that filled the outer cup of pearl, with 
the appendage that traversed the numerous empty 
chambers from one to the other into which it passed, 
is always torn away, I have never met with any body 
who has found the recent animal with the shell, A 
tubiforra prolongation runs from the first chamber to 
the last, an extension no doubt of the columellar or 
retrnctor muscle. A person who has seen a shell 
of the pearly nautilus pompiiius cannot doubt that 
the organization of spirula must he perfectly similar 
The animal would be discovered if those who had 



91 



opportunities of searching the keys outside at all times, 
and under all circumstances of weather, would make 
themselves acquainted with the fact, that, when the 
shell is enveloped with the fleshy mantle, and its 
fragility renders it necessary that it should he so 
enveloped always when moving about, it looks like 
a mass of blubber. No one would suspect that the 
beautiful shell of the cyproea was to be found in the 
lump of shapeless gelatine that lies about on the 
low keys. The cover of the spirula has a similar 
unsightly look. We are as ill informed nearly 
about the pearly nautilus, as about this cephalapod 
of ours. Our information on the former is nearly 
all confined to the following fact in Bennett's 
" Wanderings.'" ' A mate of a whaler who had 
been shipwrecked among the Fidgi group of islands 
in the Southern Pacific, and had resided among the 
group for nearly three years, told Mr Bennett, that 
he had seen the shell of the pearly nautilus con- 
taining the living animal, floating in the water near 
one of the islands. He had only seen two living, 
although the empty shells were very numerous among 
the islands. The first time he saw one, was when 
in a canoe with some ether shipwrecked Europeans ; 
it was then floating upon the surface of i\\Q water 
with the mouth of the shell uppermost. It was en- 
veloped in the mantle, which extended some dis- 
tance upwards, and over the whole of the shell ; and 
it had such an appearance as to cause one of the 
men in the canoe to say ; — * There is a large piece of 
blubber upon the water ; on approaching it, the ani- 



92 



rcial retracting the mantle, displayed the beautiful 
stripped shell and sank before they could capture it.' 
(Appendix, vol. ii, p. 410.) 



When I wns a lad at a grsm mar-school in the 
north of England a young friend who had that plen« 
sant activity of mind which fitted him for everything 
that wns smart, expert, and tasteful, amussd the 
town with cleverly describing the effect produced oh 
its jog-trot business people, by the coming of fox- 
hounds into the neighbourhood. He depicted the 
sudden frenzy for the hunt on all sorts and descrip- 
tions of people. His father's boatmen had quitted 
their bnrges and taken the bar^e horses to the field. 
The urchin3 of the parish clerk had had sufficient in • 
fluence with the vicar to get the loan of his ponies : 
everybody had taken everything to join the pack 
and ray friend's well known trotter an incomparable 
roadster, which had been sent to the smithy to be 
shod all round, was too irresistible a temptation to 
the Farrier, and he and the trotter when inquired 
after, were both accounted for, by the universal an- 
swer to all questions for everybody, " gone a*hunt- 
ing, sir." 

" Most men,' says White of Selborne, ' are sports- 
men by constitution, and there is such an inherent 
spirit for hunting in human nature, as scarce any in- 
hibitions can restrain." The occurrence that stirs in- 
to activity such a hum-drum place as Port Royal, is 
the intelligence that some of the naval, or some of 
the artillery officers are off for a day's sport with the 



98 



devil-fish. Eve~y available vessel is in requisition/' 
canoes are launched, and glide rapidly to the spot 
where it is announced that the harpoon has been suc- 
cessfully struck* A string of boais will be seen tow- 
ed to sea for miles away before the monster is brought 
in ; and when he conies in, it would take a team of 
oxen to drag; him ashore, if such a thing as a team of 
oxen had been ever to be found in Port Royal, I 
am informed that the artillery officers have been 
successful in the chase and capture of two of these 
colossal rays lately. Nothing particular has been 
related to me of their adventures, but if a naturalist 
would realize the excitement of these occurrences 
here, he will find a graphic narrative of the taking 
of two devil fishes related by Lieutenant Lamont of 
the 91st regiment, in the 11th volume of the Edin- 
burgh Philosophical Journal. 

The Lieutenant had been called to the beach by 
some one to join an assembled multitude in looking 
at a sea-devil. His curiosity and surprise, were not 
less excited than theirs when he saw floating close 
on the surface about twenty yards away from him, 
a large living dark coloured mass, whose shape and 
size were not immediately to be deiermined, but 
which looked prodigiously big, exceeding all that he 
had seen or heard of fishes. It was pursued and 
harpooned, and no sooner had the weapon struck, 
than the monster made oif with great velocity, tow- 
ing the boat of the harpooner after him. A succes- 
sion of boats came up, and these stringing them- 
selves one to another as they consecutively struck 
him, formed a long line, but such was the great 



94 



strength of the animal, that in the course of four 
hours it had towed the retinue ten miles out to sen. 
Night wa3 drawing on, and to bring the chase to a 
close another harpoon was struck, when the devil 
darting ofif, by one. convulsive effort, broke loose 
from all fetters and carried away eight or ten har- 
poons and pikes, leaving every one staring in as- 
tonishment at an animal, that could thus snatch him- 
self from the power of his pursuers. 

Lieutenant Lamont gives another detailed account 
of the take of a Devil-fish more within the harbour, 
when the animal ^traversed up and clown with t-,»q 
boats after him, towing the first boat whose harpoon 
took effect with such velocity, that those in company 
could not overtake it. The struggle this monster 
made to get away was tremendous ; plunging 
in the midst of the boats ; darting from the bottom 
to the surface alternately ; dashing the water and 
foam on every side, and rolling round and round to 
extricate himself from the pole. Unable to effect 
his escape by these expedients; he set to, towing all 
the string of boats after him, a feat he performed 
with the greatest ease. He then suddenly brought 
the retinue to a stop by laying himself at the bottom 
of the water, from which the stretch and strain of 
all the boats could not move him. Enticed inch by 
inch to the surface by slackening the tension of the 
united fleet, he was finally brought up again, when 
a general assault of pikes and muskets was made 
on him. Literally riddled through with wounds, he 
floated clean up, not as yet quite dead,, Until this 
capture was effected by Lieutenant St. John of the 



95 



artillery, it had been supposed that a sen-devil was 
beyond the main and might of human seizes ra — ■*» 
The dimensions of this lust fish was only fifteen feet 
the depth of the body being from three to four feet, 
having a mouth two feet and a half wide, into which 
a man entered with ease. This is at least ten feet less 
than the measurement of some of them. The larg* 
est that ever came under my own eyes, was when I 
was on board a vessel of Bourdeaus on my way 
from Haiti to France We hadjust cleared the last 
of the Bahamas, and as we gently scudded onward 
with the wind on our beam, we sailed close along 
one of these cephalopteras leisurely flapping and 
floundering on the surface of the broken waters, 
striking first one fin into the air and then the other, 
and presenting a bulk of living flesh, half the di- 
mensions of the vessel. A specimen of this fish from 
our inter-tropical seas figured and sent to Lacepede, 
was nearly twenty feet in size. ' It is this species 
that Barrere and other travellers have spoken of, 
of uncommon dimensions, seen springing above the 
surface of the waters and splashing them to an im- 
mense height when falling into the sea 'again. It is 
these fishes that Le Yaillant saw in his second voy • 
age to Africa, the smallest of them having been 
caught was found to be twenty five feet long and 
some thirty wide j and it is this fish that Somnini 
speaks of when he represents a flat fish, seen on the 
surface larger and wider than the ship he was sail* 
ing in. 

llisso gives a very interesting trait of character, 
in two of these monsters. In the month of Sept* 



96 



1807, they took in a net they call a mandrague 
at Nice, a female cephaloptera, the vacca of the 
Mediterranean fishermen. It weighed 1,328 pound.-} 
avoirdupois. Sometime after they captured the 
male, which weighed but 885 pounds. The first 
taken .fish, the female, was thrown into the boat 
lowing piteously, the tail having been thrust into the 
gilis. The male ceaselessly haunted the spot for 
two days. From time to time it wandered round 
and round the nets, searchingfor its lost mate where 
it had disappeared, and was finally caught in the 
mandrague that had taken its companion, but quilts 
dead. 

The mandrague, the net here spoken of is pecu- 
liar to the French Mediterranean coast, ft is long 
and complicated ; and divided into chambers. It fs 
3tretched out with anchors, and gathered in by seve- 
ral boats together, There is something amusingly 
touching in this picture of the loves of sea-devils ; 
the moaning captive and the love be-gone wanderer 
seeking his lost one. The lover finds no solace 
but in dying in the toils in which the dear object of 
his affections had perished. The old feeding ground 
ceases to be pleasant. What a difference between 
love and every other desire. " Dinner is taken 
away as soon as over and we regret it not. It re- 
turns again with the return of appetite. The beef 
of to-morrow will succeed the mutton of to-day, as 
the mutton of to*day succeeded the veal of yester- 
day, But when once the heart has been occu- 
pied by a beloved object, in vain would we at- 
tempt to supply the charm by another. How easily 



97 



are our desires transferred from dish to dish, Love 
only, dear delusive, delightful love, restrains our 
wandering appetites, and confines them to a particu- 
lar gratification." I think here the burlesque of the 
u Rovers or the double Arrangement" has supplied me 
with an admirable illustration of love at the bottom 
of the sea, among the seductive allurements of soles, 
turbot, and oysters, sardines, anchovies, and stur- 
geon. 

This is one phase of appetite among sea devils ; 
we shall present another of mere mischief and devil* 
ry. Colonel Hamilton Smith once witnessed the" 
destruction of a soldier by a cephaloptera off Trini- 
dad. The soldier, a good swimmer, was attempting 
to desert from the ship then at anchor in the entrance 
of the Boca. It was just after daylight, and the 
man being called to by a sailor in the main-cross- 
trees, endeavoured to return to the vessel, when at 
the moment a devil fish just threw one of his fins 
over him and carried him down. This wns not for 
the gratification of appetite ; it was for pure mis- 
chief and frolic that he bore down the swimming 
soldier. 

The sea-devils luxuriate much upon the surface, 
and though they have never been observed so frolic 
some as their congeners the sting-rays, —the trygons, 
who frequently spring out of the water, and pitch 
themselves to a distance like quoits, yet they are 
fond ot sauntering about, flapping first one wing- 
like fin and then the other in the sunny fluid. In 
an early morning sail from Passage Fort to Kingston, 
among the stretch of shoals between Fort Augusta 
i 



93 



and Hunt's Bay, their favourite feeding ground, ! 
passed three of these monsters swimming on the 
surface. They were spread out, in the midst of the 
clotted mangroves like lotus leaves upon a pond. It 
is about the sands here, you will find the nurse-shark 
scyliium ciliate basking by hundreds in the month 
ot July : and at all times the gar-fish in the glance 
of the rising sun, amusing itself by leaping from left 
to right and right to left over every stick that floats 
in its way. Every now and then one or other kind 
of fish will make a clean breaching of some dozen or 
fifteen feet up into the air. Mere we may meet with 
our cetaceous dolphins rolling and tumbling. Fishes 
are very frolicsome. I confess that when I see their 
sportiveness, the evidence of their exuberant enjoy- 
ment of life ; their swimming hither and thither, 
sometimes few and sometimes many together ; swift 
or slow, gentle or rapid, just as they please, the ele- 
ment seems to be to have in it that especial plea- 
sureableness which is exhibited by a parcel of boys 
in a morning bathe. Water has a comfort of feeling 
exceedingly appreciable to our own sensibilities, and, 
I think, above all, sea-water. 

The lips of the sea- devil are a pavement of ivory 
rough and rugged as a file. Their fins spread out 
into a point, like the wing3 of a bird. They have 
iiexib!e cartilaginous horns to their head, making a 
kind of inward roll upon one another. With these 
they scoop their food into their capacious mouths. 
One cannot contemplate this platitude of fish with- 
out wishing to see in such a giant the removed skin, 
with the numerous phalanges divided into several 



m 



pieces ; and the belted neck supporting the anterior 
extremities, and the carpal hones ; and the vertebrae 
sustaining the pelvic apparatus ; and all that curious 
circling in of the cranium, which makes it all head 
and wings, and obtains for it the name of cephalotera^ 
The sunning out of the great living mass by" swim- 
ming at the surface is to obtain the necessary degree 
of warmth for the maturation of the foetus. Their 
sexual companionship results from their impregnat- 
ing in coitu, and bringing forth an ovo-viviparous 
offspring.* 

The animal of spirula is one of the desiderata of na* 
lural history. If one would appreciate duly the extent 
to which the subject affects scientific intelligence? 
he has only /to consult Dr. Buckland'a Bridgewater 
Treatise on Geology, eh, xv, sect, vi — where he tells 
us that from Peron's discovery of the shell of a spi- 
rulapartially enclosed within the body of a sepia, 
we ascertain the nature and organization of the ex- 
tinct ammonites of the earliest transition strata, 
down to those of the most recent secondary forma- 
tions. The interior of the ammonites was divided 
into numerouschnmbers by transverse plates, pierced 

* On tht 4th May : a devil fish was taken in the har- 
bour of Montego Bay. It is a very unusual place for a. 
fish of the habits we have mentioned, there being no 
bank there to accommodate them when breeding. I 
suspect, however, on the opposite coast of Cuba in the 
shoals of the Jardinas keys, they are common, and the 
one taken in this North-side harbour, had been driven 
over in the late boisterous weather. I understand Ano- 
ther was seers at. the same time. 



100 

by a siphuncle near the dorsal margin. This any 
one will perceive is the character of the spirula of 
the Fort Royal beach. 

But to return to the children picking shells.— 
How pleasant it is to see their bold gambols on the 
beach within the beat of the blustering surge. It is 
in the evening one mostly meets them. The morn* 
ing is the hour of the land-breeze. The constant 
ocean wind by midday would be enticing, if there 
were any embowered shadows on the shore to rest 
in and enjoy it. We hear the nurses singing to their 
young charges in the pleasant blandness of the breeze 
at noontide, not on the beach, but within the long 
piazzas of the buildings overlooking the waters. I 
hardly know what appropriate songs they have to 
chime in with the wind's lullaby, but I will give 
them one which they mav find a tune to, if they 
will. 

THE CREOLE NURSE'S SONG TO THE 

SEA-BREEZE. 
Flatteringly, faintly, just up from the ocean, 

Freshly and fragrantly over the lea, 
The sea-breeze is coming, I see its light motion, 

A-stirring the leaves of the cocoa-nut tree. 
It comes and brings gladness to me and my baby; 
It comes and brings health to my baby and me ; 
And fresh as a rose will the sun-light of day be, 
Since stirring and up is the breeze from the sea. 

Look, see, how the light on the waters is dancing, 
Look, see, how the ripples run racing away ; 

How whiter and whiter the waves are advancing, 
And sinking and rising like lambkins at play : 

And hark at the breakers, but loud as they may be, 



101 

They sound like sweet music far over the sea 
They sound like sweet music to me and my baby, 
For health they bring both to my baby and mc. 



The sky is chalky, thick with gathering vapour, 
for the sun is rising to the zenith, and the mountains 
loom hazy and dull. The sea-breezes come tardily, 
but linger till some time after sundown. It is plea- 
sant to be on the beach with the slant beams at 
your back, and to look eastward on the surging 
waters breaking on the sands. The land is so inter- 
mingled with the clouds, that you cannot tell the 
beginning or the ending of earth and air. It is not 
easy to describe the appearance of the scenery. It 
is difficult to paint it; yet I have seen some of Mar- 
tin's wild and vast representations of vales and inter- 
minable mountains, and measureless gatherings of 
vapour, which have been a vivid realization of these 
objects. The mountains rising through the obscu- 
rity in darkened patches, present here and there a 
peak above the clouds, but have trails of rolling and 
changing mists, rushing up them. Although you 
see no definite line of vapour downwards, you have 
distinct enough, the lights and shadows of the vast 
accumulations upwards. Onward with steady force 
rushes the wind, and the sea with its green islets 
and white beaches, and its breakers on the lines of 
near reefs, and the heaving curve of billows on the 
shore, comes with its heavy and measured reverbe- 
rations awfully. 

Applying to the sunset, the half light, half obscure 
character that Milton gives to sunrise, when an 



102 

eclipse is coming on, would paint now the struggling 
rays through the thickened atmosphere. The de- 
scending mass of radiance which rather shews where 
light is, than what it is, looks shorn of its beams, 
through the horizontal misty nir, and brings on 
twilight. The bordering plain between the seabord 
and inland range of mountains fades into nothing, 
and the broad sky overhead, is shot over by straight 
lines of dark and faint tints, that touch from the 
western to the eastern horizon. The breeze is still 
blustering ; it scarcely relaxes in force, but by the 
time it is dark and the stars are out, ihe vapours 
have dispersed, and the night is pretty clear and 
calm, and the southern cross very conspicuous. 

The new lighthouse shines like a meteor in the 
east. The shore, though a mere sand bank forming 
what is called the palisades, slips at two yards off 
into ten fathoms of water. There are no protrud- 
ing rocks : the danger in the long canal-like entrance 
irom the light house to the harbour, is in the islets 
and shoals outward, marked by great floating bea- 
cons, that give an awful announcement of danger 
in their ceaseless turmoil, and movement up and 
down, looking like sea serpents swimming into har- 
bour. The big black and white buoy near the point, 
is a vivid picture of Commodore MacQuhae's en- 
counter with the solitary living creature passing the 
Dasdalus. By the assistance of the light house, ships 
now safely enter Port Royal after night-fall. Many 
a time the rocket of the approaching steamer startles 
the eye, as the first intimation that the packet is 
coming in. A ship nolongernow approaches theshore 



108 

*' As one who, wandering in the starless night, 
Feels momently, the jar, of unseen waves, 
And hears rhe thunder of an unknown sea, 
Breaking along an unimagin'd shore." 
All is as safe and straight into harbour as a turn 
pike road, 



The week's indulgence from home is at end ; 
we return up to Kingston. The morning aspect of 
the mountains, and the air coming from them over 
the waters, are very different from the scenery and 
sensation of the sea, as the breeze lulls to slumber 
at sunset. The day is very little more than up. — 
The gray mountain masses show some three or four 
gradations of depth, barely looking " misty and 
wide." The peaks do not wake up in night caps : 
they are not kerchiefed in clouds. The Long- 
mountain, beneath the triple pointed crest3 of the 
far off heights, specially distinguished as the Blue 
mountains, fills the foreground dark and crouching, 
and reminds one of the Sphinx at the foot of the 
Pyramids. The dwellings of the city rise with a 

border of ascending smoke trailing out seaward. 

The ship3 lie out in the calm, looming large and 
hazy. The fluttering waters just rippie by the boat, 
with the sails barely bulging to the air. It is a quiet 
journey, with some three or four other boats taking 
the land breeze with us. We slip by the mangroves 
with scarce a leaf more than just winking. A cou- 
ple of pelicans flap past us : a flock of wild ducks 
winnow high over head : a gull screams as he flies 
by lazily ; a heron or two, like snow flakes, float 



104 

a way at a distnnce over the marshes. There is no 
sound of the morning dove, though he is so often 
heard here tootling out, his song of " sailor's coal's 
true blue." The moving smoke through the morass 
is the train speeding on the railway, and there it is 
that the white egrets are on the wing. The glanc- 
ing sunlight tips the salient mountains. We have 
reached the Wherry-wharf, and are in Kingston 
again. 

But what good has the change done me? A 
great deal. " Le plus lent a promettreest toujours, 
le plus fidele a tenir," says Rousseau. The sea- 
breeze is not, however, slow in promising to the in- 
valid, and he keeps his word. As long as he made 
music for me, my blood circulated with renovating 
power. Afternoon clouds brought scudding rain 
along the mountains, and the wind from the sea 
died away suddenly, and a squally chill blowing 
from the land, would make me cough again. The 
ocean air was always soothing ; the ocean voice had 
always a sound of consolation. Its good work was 
done by degrees, and like work so done it promised 
to be successful ; but for a cure I have come away 
too soon. Friday, 27th April, 1855. 



APPENDIX, 



* # * While the papers, entitled " a Week 

at Port Royal," were passing through the press, Mr 
John Murphy, one of the Surgeons of the Naval 
Hospital, kindly sent me the skin of a large petrel, 
taken at the Plumb-point Light-house. Being a 
new and undescribed species of procellaria, he had 
deemed it would form an interesting addition to the 
notes I was giving to the public. It is not among 
the ascertained birds in Mr Gosse's Ornithology of 
Jamaica, but is referred to by him in communica- 
tions from myself and Mr Andrew Gregory John- 
ston. I shall best state what is or has been ascer - 
tained respecting this undescribed member of the 
petrel family by extracting the note I sent to Mr 
Murphy on receiving his specimen. 

" The bird sent to me is one of the larger petrels 
(procillariadse) inhabiting the Cliffs of the Blue 
Mountains. The procillariadae have diomedea, the 
.-ilbatross, at one extremity and thalassidroma, Ble- 
ther Curey's chickens, at the other. Although 
the burrowing of our birds in the Blue Mountain* 
Cliffs was particularly noticed by me in my commu^ 
nication to Mr Gosse as something special, it is the 
habit of all the petrel-tribe, except the albatrosses. 
They erect a structure of clay and vegetable remains, 
of 'some height, but all the others from the fulmar's 
and shearwaters downward (fulmarus and puffinus,) 
breed in burrows, more or less associated, remaining 



106 

there concealed during the day, and coming forth to 
feed at twilight. The rushing of the bird obtained, 
on the light at Plumb-point, would not have been 
remarkable had it been n duck, a plover, or a sand- 
piper, for it is known that when those birds make 
their migratory approaches to shore, they will dash 
themselves against the lights to which they steer 
when making the land at night, but the same head- 
long instinct surprises me in this petrel. If it were 
habitual in this class of birds, we should have heard 
of flocks of Mother Carey's chickens, rushing in i\i 
cabin windows, attracted like nocturnal moths to 
candles ;— -but I know of no such incident. I take 
our sizeable petrel to be the diablotin of the Wind- 
ward Islands, described by Attwood in his Dominica, 
though he speaks of white in the under plumage* it 
occurs in our bird in the upper, and of the whole ap • 
pearance being singular. This is hi3 description.— 
£i The diablotin feeds on fish, flying in great flocks 
to the sea-side at night time, with hideous screams 
like the owl, which it resembles in its dislike to 
day light. The nests are made in holes in the 
mountains, and the flesh is considered a delicacy, 
particularly when salted." " To the questionable 
•taste here noticed, I would add, that it may be then 
taken as a sort of cod's liver for its oil, when dressed,, 
as Soyer recommends, the genuine liver to be." 

From the dimensions of our bird, 13 inches long, 
by some 26 inches in the extent of wing, and from 
the proportions and character of the bill and nasal 
tubes, and the grooved mandible, I should say the 
Blue Mountain petrel, must be classed with the 



107 

prion of Lacepede, the genus pachytila of Iliigar, 
the type being the procellaria vittata and ccerulea of 
Gmelin. 

Our bird has a triple row of palatal teeth, which 
I do not find to be a peculiarly set down of petrels 
generally, though I suspect it is so. The prions, 
however, like the diomedeas are birds of the Southern 
Hemisphere. Mr Gould, the distinguished ornitho- 
logist thus notices them. From the westerly winds ? 
which prevail in the Southern Hemisphere, between 
the latitudes 35° and 55°, I am induced to believe 
that a perpetual migration is carried on by several 
members of the oceanic family, continually passing 
from west to east, and circumnavigating this portion 
of the globe. This remark more particularly refers 
to the albatrosses, prions, and other large kind of 
petrels ; the same individuals of several of these 
species having been observed to follow our ship for 
some thousand of miles. Until I had ascertained 
that they were nocturnal, it was a matter of surprise 
to me how the birds which were seen around the 
vessel at night fall were to be observed crossing our 
wake at day*hreak on the following morning, the 
ship having frequently run a distance of nearly one 
hundred miles during the night." (ZooL proc 1839.) 



ADDENDUM, 



I spent a day with Dr. Sehmarda. To a person 
primed with general knowledge in Marine Zoology, 
the extent and value of his labours are seen at a 
glance. Since Broussonnett's visit to the island, we 
have had no naturalist who has done so much, or 
who has done what he has accomplished so effectu* 
ally, in the oceanic department, as Dr. Sehmarda. 
I would not undervalue Dr. Bancroft's collection, or 
Dr. Parnell's, both important acquisitions to the 
British Museum ; nor Mr. Gosse's delightful memo- 
randa in his " Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica " — 
But besides fishes, Dr. Sehmarda has attended to 
the infusoria^ the radiata, mollusca y and Crustacea, 
and greatly enlarged our acquaintance with the 
most numerous, and most varied objects of marine 
life. His glass cylinders of about the length and 
breadth of a spermaceti candle, are exceedingly 
convenient and effective deposits for specimens. A 
paper marked with tho object deposited, shoved in 
between the several specimens, separates each from 
each, and enables one, in the colourless glass and 
liquid to inspect them all round. Drawings could 
be made without removing the animal, and descrip- 
tions noted without handling the specimens. 

in the facilities of transport, which the ocean 
waters afford, Dr. Sehmarda finds the living crea- 
tures in the lower grades of organic life not alone 



109 

very similar in all the seas, but in numerous in- 
stances identically the same. The Atlantic corre- 
sponds marvellously with the Mediterranean, and 
the Indian and Pacific Ocean, have very universally 
the same genera with the Atlantic. He finds a 
community of infusorial life between the Arctic 
and Equatorial regions. Besides the equable tem- 
perature in which they exist, and in which they 
move, subject to a general diffusion from the whole 
region of waters being traversed by great streams 
and currents, which are so many ocean rivers, •*- 
much of the universality is due to the phenomena 
of geolopy, as Humboldt has shewn. "Previous 
to the existence of the human race, the action of 
the interior of the globe upon the solid crust which 
was increasing in volume, must have modified the 
temperature of the atmosphere, and rendered the 
whole surface capable of giving birth to those pro- 
ductions which ought to be considered as tropical, 
since by the effect of the radiation and refrigeration 
of the exterior the relation of the earth to a central 
body, the sun, began almost exclusively to deter- 
mine the diversity of geographical latitudes." 

In the infusorial department, under a heading,— 
"Jamaica," Dr. Schmarda has made numerous 
drawings of objects determined under the Micro- 
scope. The drawings arc magnified somewhere 
about fifty fold. 



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